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Neuroscience Can't Explain How a Microprocessor Works (economist.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the open-can-of-worms dept.

mspohr writes: The Economist has an interesting story about two neuroscientists/engineers -- Eric Jonas of the University of California, Berkeley, and Konrad Kording of Northwestern University, in Chicago -- who decided to test the methods of neuroscience using a 6502 processor. Their results are published in the PLOS Computational Biology journal. Neuroscientists explore how the brain works by looking at damaged brains and monitoring inputs and outputs to try to infer intermediate processing. They did the same with the 6502 processor which was used in early Atari, Apple and Commodore computers. What they discovered was that these methods were sorely lacking in that they often pointed in the wrong direction and missed important processing steps.

5 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Intelligent design by glitch! · · Score: 5, Funny

    I know I'll catch hell for my religious beliefs, but...

    I think that the 6502 was not the result of evolution, but rather it had a Creator and was the product of Intelligent Design. There are just so many subtle clues that suggest features that were deliberately put in there. Could natural selection really explain how it had two different indirect access modes, one that selects a direct index from an offset, and the other adds the offset to the index?

    These researchers may be trying to apply the wrong methods to a device that is almost certainly the product of a higher power.

    --
    A dingo ate my sig...
    1. Re:Intelligent design by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      And the great and powerful Woz spake thusly: Let the Intel become the brain of my new creation! But lo! The Book of Jobs decreed the creation be cost effective and priced by the Number of the Beast. And so out of the land of Silicon came Forth the 6502 to eat from the Apple tree. Eight shall be the number of bits, no more and no less.

    2. Re:Intelligent design by glitch! · · Score: 4, Funny

      Obligatory Princess Bride quote:
      "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."

      --
      A dingo ate my sig...
    3. Re:Intelligent design by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      If your elitist, East Coast evolution is real, why has no one found the missing link between 6502 and earlier 4-bit microprocessors?

  2. C'MON by dmomo · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's not brain surgery.