Brain Discussion

There is an epic discussion on the Connectionist mailing list right now.  It started on Jan 23, when Juyang (John) Weng of Michigan State University criticized an announcement of the upcoming Workshop on Brain-like Computing that the workshop is really about neuron-like computing and there is a wide-gap between that and brain-like computing.  Another thing he seemed peeved about was that people in the field were not fully conversant in the literature, which is true.  People in neuroscience can be largely unaware of what people in robotics and cognitive science are doing and vice versa. The discussion really became lively when Jim Bower jumped in. It’s hard to summarize the entire thread but main themes include arguing about the worthiness of the big data approach to neuroscience, lamenting about the lack of progress for the past thirty years, and what we should be doing.