I know much of your guys’ work in based around research done by Vernon B. Mountcastle. I was wondering, are there any additional people whose work helped serve a similar function?
In particular, have any of you read up on Gerald Edelman’s work?
He and Mountcastle worked pretty closely together a number of times - at one point even co-publishing in the MIT Press (a book called “The Mindful brain”). Later in his career, Edelman became pretty fascinated with the neurological mechanisms of consciousness and in something he referred to as a “Conscious Artifact.” I’m working my way through one of his later books, ‘A Universe of Consciousness,’ and thought it actually tied pretty closely with what Numenta is working towards.
But anyways, yeah, I’m just curious, have any of you read any of his works? If so, what were your thoughts? Do you have any favorite publications/books/individuals that you’d recommend?
Good questions! We haven’t focused very much on consciousness so didn’t get deep into Edelman’s work on that. The link that @brainwaves shared also contains a list of peer-reviewed papers further down which are some key works that we keep returning to and that have shaped this project (there are obviously hundreds but the ones listed there contain some of the big ideas/inspirations)
Thanks for the list! I plan on pouring through some of those papers over the holiday break
Also, I suppose I should make note of Edelmans use of the word ‘consciousness.’ He meant to use it in the biologically constrained, sensory/perceptual use of the word, not in the philosphical sense. (I know many people can be a bit repelled by the mention of ‘Consciousness.’)
Much of his work seemed to be about conceptualizing the reentrant architectures found between cortical columns and the thalamus, something he referred to as the ‘Dynamic Core Hypothesis.’ (You had mentioned Numenta working through some similar cortical-thalamic stuff recently.)
The thing I thought might be most useful, however, was his work on ‘Neuronal Group Selection,’ which seems like a logical next step for something like Numenta’s own columnar voting mechanisims.
But anywho, I’m sure you guys have heard all this before. It just felt wrong of me to stumble across his work, see how closely tied to Mountcastle’s it was, and not try to bring attention to it. So I’ll stop talking now and just say I very much look forward to reading those papers. I hope you all have a good turkey day!
Hi @HumbleTraveller thanks for pointing that out and also clarifying his use of the term consciousness. I actually haven’t read this book by him so I’ll put that on my holiday reading list
I am finishing reading “A Brief History of Intelligence” right now. And I can say that it has a lot shared thoughts with TBP. An author mentions Mountcastle and his theory, describes layers of neocortex etc. Moreover the book has review by Jeff Hawkins at the back side. The list mentioned above also contains this book. In general book tells about key five breakthroughs during evolution of mind from ancient small worms to humans. A lot of valuable ideas and graphics. I highly reccomend this book who interested in TBP and related topics.
one other theory that is linked to the TBP theory and its Numenta’s predecessors in my brain is the Theory of Constructed Emotion by Lisa Feldman Barrett. Perhaps, especially, the “Why Neurons Have Thousands of Synapses” paper the most, as it is based on the fact that emotions are instances of categories resulting from predictions grounded in a rich context, such as interoception, exteroception, and the other predictions coming from within the brain, with the function of driving behavior and one of its incarnations: budgeting body resources. This is in my view very well aligned with TBP, and has a number of recognizable ‘aha’ moments.
I am very familiar with “The Mindful Brain”. Mountcastle’s essay in that book was where I first learned about cortical columns and his proposal that they all performed the same function.
I read Edelman’s essay and some of his papers. At one point I talked to him personally. I found his theories (neural Darwinism) were not helpful in my quest to reverse engineer the neocortex.
