Researchers try to improve AI by studying our brain

While deep learning and neural networks are loosely based on the human brain, the reality is we know awfully little about how our brain works. We don't know how consciousness emerges nor do we know how the brain stores and accesses memories, or even how our brain computes so fast while using just an estimated 30W of power.

For a long time, researchers have hoped that greater understanding about our own brain will spur advances in artificial intelligence. EE Times has an update about the latest advances at the intersection of neuroscience and electronics over here.

Researchers are now able to track signals in a million-and-a-half neurons, the entire cortex of a mouse, he reported. “We can put an image in front of a mouse and read out how its processed … to start to tease out the actual neural code,” he said in a keynote at last week’s Hot Chips event here.

“How information is coded in the brain is not known; maybe it’s not a code of signals and switches [like those used in today’s computers] but something based on the relative time of arrival of multiple signals in a shared channel,” he said, pointing to work on neural information theory that began around 2009.