Harvard professor talks brain engineering at Ed Portal
The brain and how it learns may be among the most complicated puzzles in the quickly advancing field of neuroscience. But Harvard is trying to unravel its mystery. The Ariadne Project, led by David Cox, an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology and computer science at Harvard, mobilized a multi-university team of experts in neuroscience, physics, machine learning, and high-performance computing to explore the possibility of creating an artificial brain by reverse-engineering the brain of a rat while it learns. The aim is to build computer algorithms that replicate the way human brains perceive information and learn. “This is where the field of computer science and neuroscience are not only exploding, but are merging on a collision course that is allowing us to explore the way we conventionally think of understanding,” Cox told 80 attendees at the Harvard Ed Portal’s Faculty Speaker Series lecture “Toward an Artificial Brain” in Allston. “Walking across...