Ask A Genius 395 – Brain Efficiencies
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/27
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How does the brain achieve its efficiencies?
Rick Rosner: One way is specialization. I am sure. It is important for humans to be able to recognize verticals and horizontals in their field of view. I am sure the neural circuitry associated with that is specialized to do that task, and does it much more efficiently than a bunch of generalized circuitry would do.
I would guess that there is specialization throughout the brain. Another thing the brain does is that is has evolved efficient pruning to turn general circuitry into efficient circuitry by sending connections out and then pruning the ones that aren’t helpful.
There’s a third efficiency, which is efficiency generalizing – having the most efficient general neural net circuitry with even some specialization mixed in with the generalization.
All of this is extremely powerful because it is the product of hundreds of millions of years of brain development. Leading up to humans and then a couple million years of brain development in hominids and homo sapiens as well; however, it is also somewhat sloppy because it is based on evolutionary processes, which is not optimized to weed out all sloppy and inefficient structures.
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