Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!sbrunnoc@hawk.ulowell.edu
From: sbrunnoc@hawk.ulowell.edu (Sean Brunnock)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: NN Question (how can a few neurons mimic the brain?)
Message-ID: <11945@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 2 Mar 89 20:01:54 GMT
References: <32125@gt-cmmsr.GATECH.EDU>
Sender: news@swan.ulowell.edu
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From article <32125@gt-cmmsr.GATECH.EDU>, by kirlik@hms3 (Alex Kirlik):
> 
> Why should a net with only a few dozen neural units be
> successful at mimicking human behavior that is presumably
> the result of the activation of a tremendous number of
> neurons? 

  I don't see why not: programs such as Doctor, Racter, and
Eliza are also successful at mimicking human behavior without
the need for nets at all. The point that I am trying to make 
is that these programs simply mimic, they do not emulate the
human brain.

  I find that there are some people who are under the impression
that by linking together many specialized programs(a vision 
processor, a language processor,...), they will be able to create 
something akin to the human mind. I do not subscribe to this
theory because the human brain is pretty much uniform. This 
fact becomes dramatically obvious in the cases of people who have
had accidents resulting in the damage of sections of the brain.
If the damaged section performed a specialized function, then
for awhile, the person will not be able to perform that action.
After some time, the rest of the brain is able to assimilate
the functions performed by the damaged section and the person
is able to function normally again. 

  I look at the market and current research and I see a lot of
neural network expert systems, handwriting recognizers, and
image processors. The term neural network here is very misleading.
I believe that a neural network should be able to learn to do 
anything and still remain flexible enough to deal with abrubt 
changes as the human brain is capable of doing. 

				Sean Brunnock