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Sciborg_S_Patel
Can Neuroscience Understand Donkey Kong, Let Alone a Brain?
"Two researchers applied common neuroscience techniques to a classic computer chip. Their results are a wake-up call for the whole field."
"Two researchers applied common neuroscience techniques to a classic computer chip. Their results are a wake-up call for the whole field."
The human brain contains 86 billion neurons, underlies all of humanity’s scientific and artistic endeavours, and has been repeatedly described as the most complex object in the known universe. By contrast, the MOS 6502 microchip contains 3510 transistors, runs Space Invaders, and wouldn’t even be the most complex object in my pocket. We know very little about how the brain works, but we understand the chip completely.
So, Eric Jonas and Konrad Kording wondered, what would happen if they studied the chip in the style of neuroscientists? How would the approaches that are being used to study the complex squishy brain fare when used on a far simpler artificial processor? Could they re-discover everything we know about its transistors and logic gates, about how they process information and run simple video games? Forget attention, emotion, learning, memory, and creativity; using the techniques of neuroscience, could Jonas and Kording comprehend Donkey Kong?
No. They couldn’t. Not even close.
Even though the duo knew everything about the chip—the state of each transistor and the voltage along every wire—their inferences were trivial at best and seriously misleading at worst. “Most of my friends assumed that we’d pull out some insights about how the processor works,” says Jonas. “But what we extracted was so incredibly superficial. We saw that the processor has a clock and it sometimes reads and writes to memory. Awesome, but in the real world, this would be a millions-of-dollars data set.”
Last week, the duo uploaded their paper, titled “Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor?” after a classic from 2002. It reads like both a playful thought experiment (albeit one backed up with data) and a serious shot across the bow. And although it has yet to undergo formal peer review, other neuroscientists have already called it a “landmark paper”, a “watershed moment”, and “the paper we all had in our minds but didn't dare to write”. “While their findings will not necessarily be surprising for a chip designer, they are humbling for a neuroscientist,” wrote Steve Fleming from University College London on his blog. “This kind of soul-searching is exactly what we need to ensure neuroscience evolves in the right direction.”