From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Tue Sep 20 2005 - 13:34:05 MDT
> There has been interesting work regarding the complex dynamics of human
> *perception*, e.g. Walter Freeman's work on olfaction in rabbits.
Which is not directly about humans obviously, but has clear implications for
human olfaction as the olfactory cortex is not so dramatically different in
humans vs. rabbits
What seems to happen is that the olfactory cortex settles into a different
"attractor state" corresponding to each smell that the rabbit can perceive
(sorta like a Hopfield neural network). The attractor state emerges from
the cooperative activity of a huge number of neurons.
Of course you could make an artificial olfactory cortex in a totally
different way -- but the nonlinear-dynamical/complexity-science explanation
seems to be reasonably accurate as an explanation of how brains do it.
-- Ben
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