I study how brains and computers are different in the way they compute. These differences arise in large part because of basic physical differences in their hardware. Besides offering clues to brain functions as models, neural networks perform some practical applications. More recently, I have been working on a set of models for the intermediate-level organization of the nervous system.
Scientists know a great deal about individual neurons.
We also know a good deal about behavior and the functioning of very large groups of neurons. But we know almost nothing about how groups of a hundred or a thousand or even a hundred thousand neurons cooperate to compute, or perceive, or think, or behave. One question I am now trying to answer concerns scaling. I became interested in brains and computers as a graduate student in psychology and neuroscience at M.I.T. I wanted to know how I worked. And, if we learn enough about brains, perhaps eventually we may be able to build machines that work the way we do.