I am a computational cognitive neuroscientist, an have worked at many levels. I find each kind of data and model useful to some extent, but I have to admit that the least useful, are, to my mind, those at the detailed neural network level, like the ones discussing in this paper. Somewhat more useful are higher level dynamic architecture models, and, at the highest level, cognitive models, which constrain the behavioral target we are trying to explain. I personally (as one can tell from my other posts here) find the dynamics brain development models to be the most compelling as overall models, but they are not particularly explanatory at the detailed level. Brain science is trying to do the hardest thing you can imagine, that is, explain the most complex machine in the known universe. We persist, but no one entering this field should have very high expectations of near term grand successes.
As a counterpoint, I am a computational neuroscientist who transitioned form working in human cognition to fruit fly motor control. Fruit fly neuroscience in the past decade has advanced tremendously. With the latest tools, we can record activity from specific genetically labeled neurons while stimulating others. We have identified specific groups of neurons to stimulate to get the fly to groom, walk, turn, and even walk backwards. The full fly brain has been scanned with similar techniques and the connectome is beginning to be mapped out (e.g. see this very recent post from Google AI research https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/01/releasing-drosophila-hemib... ).
I find that as we gain new tools to study the nervous system more specifically, both data and models of how neurons are organized at the circuit level become more important. To advance on an analogy in the article, it's like trying to explore the dynamics of NYC without a map. For instance, it's hard to tell how/why people interact with central park if you don't even know where they live. The more specifically you are able to pin down people, the more it matters where exactly they live to understand.
Granted, the fly is much simpler than humans or even mice, and it will likely take decades and new tools for us to study humans in this way. However, when we get there, mapping out the brain connections will be crucial to make sense of it all.
To me, though, a better analogy is assuming that because one has a detailed map of the sewer system of NYC, we now understand where we're going in Berlin, or Barcelona, or Vancouver, or that that level of detail is necessary to understand the economics of poverty or pollution. That wouldn't work for city planning and I don't know why people assumes it works for neural architecture either.
Similar tricks can be played with the human brain, things we have been able to do for decades, while people are undergoing brain surgery, and now later, with TMS. However, being able to elicit limb movements or bits of speech, or even emotional qualia is different from having a dynamic understanding of the brain in vivo in everyday life.
Certainly having an understanding of detailed circuitry is interesting and important, but to me there's a forest for the trees problem.
The poster above you is why I decided to just work as a software engineer instead. It was such a depressing and bleak field. Thank you for having another opinion!
To me all these mapping and monitoring efforts always seem like trying to reverse engineer Microsoft Word's grammar checker by measuring electrical signals on various parts of a computer that somehow got into the 18th century.
I really hope we can realize how the whole thing works by looking at its parts. But I doubt it will bring the breakthrough. On the other hand maybe there is this one mechanism that we have to discover to make sense of all the parts. Then those efforts will form the groundwork for an explosive understanding.
much simpler by how many orders of magnitude? If it's surface area driven it rises as a function of size more slowly for increases in volume. If it's connectionist then it's an O(n^2) Increase?
I had a similar reaction, working in an adjunct field but as someone who often works with neuroscientists.
My impression is that there's a lot of very oversimplified assumptions being made all the time in these fields that get glossed over in very arrogant (or naive?) ways. It's really astonishing to me, not just because of how oversimplified the assumptions are but because researchers are then surprised things don't work out.
To be fair, this is true of other fields as well. I'm more familiar with molecular genetics and genomics, and the same things happen there. There seems to be a certain hubris that goes unquestioned, and it always amazes me, the sci-fi fantasy narrative being accepted as fact.
Just to take one thing for example: there's huge anatomical differences between people's brains even at the macroscopic level, that just get glossed over in discussion. Those fMRI images you see? They're often done by aligning different images to a common map, just assuming individuals' brains are carbon copies of one another. Now you're going to try to delineate a connectome at the neural level, as if there is one connectome at that level?
When will everyone learn? Where's the public skepticism?
Thanks. Comments like this from people with a long and broad experience in a field are why I keep coming back to HN, because it helps me know where to look next if I want to verify or learn more about a new topic. What do you think we learn should keep our eye on specifically for new developments?
What you're looking for is Elman et al's theory in Rethinking Innateness (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/rethinking-innateness) It's more like Darwin than Newton, and is (to the point of another post off this thread) an early deep-learning-like theory of how the brain (or at least the cortex) becomes organized.
Have you read smolensky's harmonium paper? It's the first restricted Boltzmann Machine -- and I believe elman and smolensky were colleagues with hinton back at UCSD (with rumelhart and Don Norman, et al).
The approach was focused on presymbolic processing -- and tried to optimize harmony. Harmony was, interestingly, the first mathematical model of the mind (by Pythagoreans/platonists in ancient Greece). It has a lot going for it these days, too, to understand oscillatory coupling in neural circuits. I learned recently that brain waves are harmonics (frequency doublings), which somehow I missed before!
I know about Smolensky's theories (have probably read that paper, but don't remember it exactly; have def. read others by PS); PS and JE are definitely contemporaries, and work/have worked in similar areas. However, these two theories operate at different levels and time scales. The oscillatory coupling theories of PS et al are related to real time computations carried out by neural networks, whereas the trophic wave theories of JE et al. relate to how these networks come to be organized as they are. As per other posts, both are useful, and probably both true to some extent. Neither is directly applicable yet in a way that makes contact with the cognitive level.
One thing that shocked me was that no one ever tried to connect "cognitive dissonance", one of the most successful social psychology theories of all time, to actual dissonance in neural oscillations.
Consonance results in greater periodicity, meaning that the action potentials are more likely to line up, whereas dissonance has less periodicity, so action potentials don't line up. It feels better (there is pleasure) when the action potentials align because of hebbian reinforcement (synchronous firing). This assumes that reinforcement would be pleasurable, but pleasure is the main reinforcer at a cognitive level.
Re "real insight", quoted from the highlight: "Current medical research tries to minimize risk to the individual while
maximizing benefit to society. Yet, in traditional research, no attempt is made
to calculate the value to society of what may be gained by research.
In contrast, GCTA seeks to maximize both individual and societal benefit
based upon explicit quantification for each. One quantitative measure of
societal benefit is information gain, which enables the prioritization of one
option versus another at a specific moment in time. "
This is a pretty broad request. esp. not knowing you well enough to be able to tell what level you can handle/want. I suggest going to the local library and skimming the collections. If you have a half-decent local library they'll have a half decent collection in each of these fields.
Middle school is hard because it's the point at which parents are cut out of the educational system, either by virtue of their not being able to be helpful (e.g., they can't do algebra or speak French either!), or by the child (through mis-directed rebellion or overzealous DIYishness).
At some point, parents have to be cut out. A child wanting to handle things more independently from parents is not a bad thing - learning to do it independently is important. What you call "mis-directed rebellion or overzealous DIYishness" is them reaching developmental milestones.
A school system that requires extensive parental help is bad system.
You’re right, of course, but ImaTiger wasn’t saying that parents need to be there forever, just (I think) partly (and, I think, correctly) answering the question of why MS is hard. Some things that are good for you are hard.
>A school system that requires extensive parental help is bad system.
Although I think I agree with the thrust of this (children need independence), I suspect the original intent was not so much direct help as cultivating an environment conducive to independent success. Like the difference between trying to grow a flower and trying to build a flower.
Of course, children eventually also need to be able to do this independently, but speaking for myself at least I didn't really appreciate this facet of education (nor was I in a position to do it for myself) in middle school.
Most 7-12 grade teachers I know would be much happier if the parents weren't involved at all in the kids education. All of the dozen or so secondary teachers I've talked to who left the educational field gave the exact same reason: "The parents."
You are making an unwarranted conclusion from this comment. Is it merely that the parents are there or not there? Could the parents be there in a more helpful capacity? Clearly just “the parents” is not a reason for anything.
An observable consequence of such dependencies is the degree to which income and academic achievement are "inherited", in the sense that kids with richer or better educated parents have more than a leg up.
> Genetic research has shown that intelligence makes a major contribution to the heritability of educational achievement. However, we show that other broad domains of behavior such as personality and psychopathology also account for genetic influence on GCSE scores beyond that predicted by intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE scores.
> The high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence
> Our findings confirmed positive associations between IQ and the facets of Competence and Dutifulness (ranging 0.11–0.27), with academic achievement showing correlations of 0.27 and 0.15 with these same facets and 0.15 with Deliberation. All conscientiousness facets were influenced by genes (broad sense heritabilities ranging 0.18–0.49) and unique environment, but common environment was judged unimportant.
In my opinion, the inheritability of intelligence and any other mental factors is largely exaggerated. It's impossible to differentiate between genetic and environmental factors in Human populations, mainly because people with the same genetic background tend to have the same environment. And yes, if you compare twins, raised apart, but in the same nation, maybe even city, probably same social class, same health and educational system, then you are left with a genetic influence of, for example 75%.
While academic achievement western societies still isn't as much determined by individual skill as many people would like to believe, it's worse in the countries the immigrants come from, and additional factors like language barriers and discrimination (intentional, structural or even accidental) render the idea of inheritability quite useless.
Another problem is that studies have identified environmental factors which influence intelligence much more than any known individual genetic factors. For example infections with Malaria or other parasites, but also the duration and quality of school attendance.
You will notice that none of the "twins raised apart" studies include such factors, because virtually no children in western societies have these problems.
And that's why the impact of the education system and socioeconomic factors on academic achievement are vastly underestimated, especially because people keep bringing up these inheritability studies.
On the one hand it sounds great to let parents participate in their children's academic education, but in reality such participation is a hard requirement for success.
And that, in turn, disadvantages students with working parents, or with parents that don't have the skill or experience to guide them to higher achievement.
It may sound awful to trust "the state" to handle education independently, but the alternatives are usually worse.
One of the most important epiphanies in my life was realizing that some parents don't care at all about their kids, some are jealous of them and actively sabotage them and that some systematically abuse them for entertainment.
It is also why I'm get angry when people push others to have children; many people should not raise children.
I'm really careful with such judgments. Humans generally love their children. If it doesn't look like that, there are other factors involved, usually alcoholism, other substance abuse and mental illness.
Meaning: They would care more for their children if they had the energy and power to do so. And some of those will also rationalize their inability to spend the energy as not wanting to do it.
And in many cases, parents are fully aware the homework that requires their help did not had to be at all and has zero educational value. Parents know said homework exists only to force them to "be involved" and resent it. As much as you try to pretend you are enthusiastic yadda yadda, the afternoon evening was killed with crappy project that really does not look like having educational value.
Parents spending time with their children is valuable. Parents modeling compliance to pointless busywork with minimal effects on educational achievement is not.
Parents spending time with kids over activities that are mutually pleasant or just talking or doing needed activities are valuable. Third party organized nonsense that just needs to be done has no intrinsic "time together" value.
And in case of bad parents, it puts the kid at mercy of bad parent even more.
This claim is way too general. I do not know your definition of success or higher achievement, but I'd say I was quite successful with zero involvement from my parents and saw numerous cases of the same.
If the state is going to be inserting itself, I'd rather the state stay away from Harrison Bergeron forcing rich people to be less educated and productive, and focus on taxing excess wealth to redistribute to children and poor adults who want to work.
What if public school is awful, and the only reason it looks decent is that some parents are picking up the slack? What would happen if you cut those parents out of the system?
