Modeling Neural Processes as Analog Computations

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports theoretical research into the brain as a computational system. It is motivated by developments in computational neuroscience where it has become increasingly clear that the sense in which the brain is computational is completely different from digital computation, the kind that predominates computer science. The researcher will develop an empirically-informed philosophical account of neural computation by drawing on current research in neuroscience and in historical research on analog computation. The results of this interdisciplinary project will contribute to the theoretical understanding of intriguing claims by psychologists and neuroscientists about the computational nature of the mind and brain. Findings are to be presented at conferences and workshops in computational neuroscience and in philosophy of science. The results of this research are to be published in an interdisciplinary monograph suitable for researchers in the cognitive science community. More broadly, the findings will be incorporated in courses to help students in both the sciences and humanities to make better sense of these kinds of claims. Despite the early intellectual exchanges between neuroscience and the study of theoretical computation, it is no longer clear precisely what is meant by claims that the brain computes. Because the brain cannot be a digital computer of the kind whose theoretical underpinnings are found with the Turing Machine, claims that the brain is computational are either vacuous or metaphorical, or in need of a principled account of computation. This research project will provide such an account. It will serve to advance philosophy of neuroscience, and it will provide much-needed theoretical support to computational neuroscientists' claims that the brain is a computer, an intriguing idea that has yet to be carefully articulated. Current ideas about computation have largely ignored analog computation, which was once a thriving paradigm for computational practice. The rehabilitation of analog computation would add to our intellectual repertoire for thinking about other systems as computational. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.