quotes about Neurons
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The first attempts to consider the behavior of so-called "random neural nets" in a systematic way have led to a series of problems concerned with relations between the "structure" and the "function" of such nets. The "structure" of a random net is not a clearly defined topological manifold such as could be used to describe a circuit with explicitly given connections. In a random neural net, one does not speak of "this" neuron synapsing on "that" one, but rather in terms of tendencies and probabilities associated with points or regions in the net.
-- Anatol RapoportSource : "The bulletin of mathematical biophysics" by Anatol Rapoport, (pp. 145-157), 1948.
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Throughout our lifetimes, we are constantly regenerating new brain cells in the hippocampus, a process called neurogenesis. New stem cells are constantly being born in the hippocampus that ultimately differentiate into fully functional neurons.
-- David Perlmutter -
Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food.
-- Frans de Waal -
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Synaptic summation is the technical term used in neurophysiology for those instances in which some neuron C is fired only by a combination of neurons A and B.
-- Gregory Bateson -
If you start responding to every stimulus, then you end up as a nerve gas case, quite literally. Neurons fire at once.
-- Hollis FramptonSource : Hollis Frampton, Bruce Jenkins (2009). “On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters: The Writings of Hollis Frampton”, p.243, MIT Press
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Love is indeed, at root, the product of the firings of neurons and release of hormones.
-- Julian Baggini -
The well-being of a neuron depends on its ability to communicate with other neurons. Studies have shown that electrical and chemical stimulation from both a neuron's inputs and its targets support vital cellular processes. Neurons unable to connect effectively with other neurons atrophy. Useless, an abandoned neuron will die.
-- Lisa GenovaSource : Lisa Genova (2011). “Lisa Genova Box Set: Still Alice and Left Neglected”, p.213, Simon and Schuster
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The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.
-- Michio Kaku -
Such a bandwidth! God, who may not have a brain made of neurons, or a CPU made of silicon, but if he has the powers attributed to him he must have something far more elaborately and non-randomly constructed than the largest brain or the largest computer we know.
-- Richard Dawkins -
Go pump some neurons. Expand your craniums
-- Robin Williams -
Scientists tracking mirror neurons noticed that a monkey will get excited not just when holding a banana, but also when seeing someone else holding a banana.
-- Sara Genn -
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In its evolution from a more primitive nervous system, the brain, as an organ with ten or more billion neurons and many more connections between them must have changed and grown as a result of many accidents.
-- Stanislaw UlamSource : "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 15: "Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science", p. 274, 1991.
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The number of neurons in the brain is very much larger than the number of components in a computer.
-- Jeremy BernsteinSource : Jeremy Bernstein (1981). “The analytical engine: computers--past, present, and future”, William Morrow &Company
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There is no scientific theory that could lead us from a detailed map of every single neuron in someone's brain to a conscious experience. We don't even have the beginnings of a theory whose conclusion would be "such a system is conscious.
-- Stuart J. Russell -
Mirror neurons make human empathy possible.
-- Nick MorganSource : Source: bobmorris.biz
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Studies of decision-making in the monkey, where activity of single neurons in parietal cortex is recorded, you can see a lot about the time-accuracy trade-off in the monkey's decision, and you can see from the neuron's activity at what point in his accumulation of evidence he makes his decision to make a particular movement.
-- Patricia ChurchlandSource : "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.
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We assume that we have free will and that we make decisions, but we don't. Neurons do. We decide that this sum total driving us is a decision we have made for ourselves. But it is not.
-- Rodolfo LlinasSource : "The Electric Brain". Interview with Lauren Aguirre, www.pbs.org. October 23, 2001.
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The cells and fibers of the brain must carry some kind of individual identification tags, presumably cytochemical in nature, by which they are distinguished one from another almost, in many regions, to the level of the single neurons.
-- Roger Wolcott SperrySource : "Brain Wiring by Presorting Axons" by Kazunari Miyamichi and Liqun Luo, Science 325 (5940), July 31, 2009.
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Most theoretical work since the proposals of Hebb (1949) and Hayek (1952) has relied upon particular forms of dependent synaptic rules in which either pre- or postsynaptic change is contingent upon closely occurring events in both neurons taking part in the synapse.
-- Gerald Edelman -