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Brains as Engines of Association: An Operating Principle for Nervous Systems
Brains as Engines of Association tackles a fundamental question in what is the operating principle of the human brain?
While a similar question has been asked and answered for virtually every other human organ during the last few centuries, how the brain operates has remained a central challenge in biology. Based on evidence derived from vision, audition, speech and music--much of it based on the author's own work over the last twenty years-- Brains as Engines of Association argues that brains operate wholly on the basis of trial and error experience, encoded in neural circuitry over evolutionary and individual time.
This concept of neural function runs counter to current concepts that view the brain as a computing machine, and research programs based on the idea that the only way to answer such questions is by reconstructing the connectivity of brains in their entirety. This view also implies that the best way to understand the details of brain function is to recapitulate their history using artificial neural networks. While this viewpoint has received support in the last few years from work showing that computers can win complex games, the brain plays a much more complex game--the "game" of biological survival--which Purves concludes is based on trial-and-error experience.
While a similar question has been asked and answered for virtually every other human organ during the last few centuries, how the brain operates has remained a central challenge in biology. Based on evidence derived from vision, audition, speech and music--much of it based on the author's own work over the last twenty years-- Brains as Engines of Association argues that brains operate wholly on the basis of trial and error experience, encoded in neural circuitry over evolutionary and individual time.
This concept of neural function runs counter to current concepts that view the brain as a computing machine, and research programs based on the idea that the only way to answer such questions is by reconstructing the connectivity of brains in their entirety. This view also implies that the best way to understand the details of brain function is to recapitulate their history using artificial neural networks. While this viewpoint has received support in the last few years from work showing that computers can win complex games, the brain plays a much more complex game--the "game" of biological survival--which Purves concludes is based on trial-and-error experience.
216 pages, Hardcover
Published April 29, 2019
6 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
Dale Purves
32 books21 followersDale Purves (born March 11, 1938) is Geller Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences where he remains Research Professor with additional appointments in the department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, and the department of Philosophy at Duke University. He earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1960 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1964.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 10, 2021
A very valuable book in the field of cognition, the final chapters of which are full of sad claims! But it is true.
The author's frankness and boldness in making some claims is also very admirable.
The author's frankness and boldness in making some claims is also very admirable.
October 21, 2019
My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.
September 30, 2024
Seems to mostly be a book about how the brain uses sensory transduction and the associations it makes to construct our projected reality.
The notion of our reality being the product of an organ in a dark cranium building the world is old.
A lot of the concepts and references felt to me to be low hanging fruit. I was disappointed. This is a famous academic that wrote one of the intro textbooks of neuro . Sad to say, at least in this book his ideas don’t seem very profound.
When I say “seems to mostly” , this is a reference to the nature of my cursory read of the book. I struggled as I had numerous books of more significance waiting on the shelf.
Oh well.
Dale if you see this. I still think you’re cool. I’ll read your book on music soon lol
The notion of our reality being the product of an organ in a dark cranium building the world is old.
A lot of the concepts and references felt to me to be low hanging fruit. I was disappointed. This is a famous academic that wrote one of the intro textbooks of neuro . Sad to say, at least in this book his ideas don’t seem very profound.
When I say “seems to mostly” , this is a reference to the nature of my cursory read of the book. I struggled as I had numerous books of more significance waiting on the shelf.
Oh well.
Dale if you see this. I still think you’re cool. I’ll read your book on music soon lol
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews