Guosong Liu, a neuroscientist at the Picower Center for Learning and Memory at MIT, reports new information on neuron design and function in the March 7 issue of Nature Neuroscience that he says could lead to new directions in how computers are made.
While computers get faster all the time, they continue to lack any form of human intelligence. While a computer may beat us at balancing a checkbook or dominating a chessboard, it still cannot easily drive a car or carry on a conversation.
Computers lag in raw processing power–even the most powerful components are dwarfed by 100 billion brain cells–but their biggest deficit may be that they are designed without knowledge of how the brain itself computes.
While computers process information using a binary system of zeros and ones, the neuron, Liu discovered, communicates its electrical signals in trinary–utilizing not only zeros and ones, but also minus ones. This allows additional interactions to occur during processing. For instance, two signals can add together or cancel each other out, or different pieces of information can link up or try to override one another.
Continue reading Trinary – Brain circuitry findings could shape computer design
