A Computer Science View of the Brain

Abstract

Computational perspectives on scientific phenomena have often proven to be remarkably insightful. Rapid advances in computational neuroscience, and the resulting plethora of data and models highlight the lack of an overarching theory for how the brain accomplishes perception and cognition (the mind). Taking the view that the answer must surely have a computational component, we present a few approachable questions for computer scientists, along with some recent work (with Christos Papadimitriou, Samantha Petti and Wolfgang Maass) on mechanisms for the formation of memories, the creation of associations between memories and the benefits of such associations.