From: Dani Eder (danielravennest@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Mar 29 2004 - 08:27:01 MST
In past reading about how the brain works, there
have been two time scales discussed. One is the time
scale of synapse firing and neural circuits involved
in processing, say vision and hearing. This ranges
from milliseconds to a second or so and uses the
existing wiring in the brain.
The longer time scale, from minutes to years, is
where the re-wiring of the brain takes place. How
this occurs in response to experience has been
fuzzy in the past. The involvement of glia in
this process sheds some light, but I think we have
a lot more to learn.
The relevance to AI would be design of neural
network type models where some nodes pass fast
signals (neuronlike), and others only 'influence'
connection formation and strength and pass slow
signals (glialike).
Daniel
--- Thomas Buckner <tcbevolver@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Ben Goertzel <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:
> > > There is also another excellent article about
> the
> > glia in the
> > > brain. It seems that glia have a much more
> > substantial role
> > > in learning and memory than previously thought.
> > This may
> > > cause those who were neuron-centered to
> > recalculate the
> > > computational capacity of the brain with strong
> > consideration
> > > to glia which outnumber neurons 9 to 1..
> > >
> > > --Kevin
> >
> > Well, current estimates of the brain's
> > "computational capacity" aren't
> > accurate within a factor of 10 anyway ;)
> >
> > Glia create the myelin sheath around neurons,
> which
> > affects speed of
> > electrical conduction between neurons. Is the
> > proposed function of glia
> > you mention related to this, or is it something
> > different?
> >
> > -- Ben
>
>
> The article says that glia have been caught in the
> act
> of exchanging information with neurons, and play a
> role in deciding where new dendrites will grow
> (that's
> about all I remember right now). Einstein's brain
> had
> the normal number of neurons but was found to be
> very
> rich in glia. Glia were considered uninteresting
> until
> recently, so we'll be hearing more when details
> emerge.
> Tom
>
> =====
>
>
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