Figure 1: The Region-Layer component. The upper surface in the figure is the Region-Layer, which consists of Cells (small rectangles) grouped into Columns. Within each Column, only a few cells are active at any time. The output of the Region-Layer is the activity of the Cells. Columns in the Region-Layer… Read More »The Region-Layer: A building block for AGI
Figure 1: Our interpretation of the Thalamocortical system as 3 interacting sub-systems (objective, subjective and executive). The structure of the diagram indicates the dominant direction of information flow in each system. The objective system is primarily concerned with feed-forward data flow, for the purpose of building a representation of the… Read More »How to build a General Intelligence: An interpretation of the biology
Figure 1: Our headline image is from the Cognitive Consilience: An atlas of key pathways cross-referenced to supporting literature articles. The complexity and variety of routing within the brain can be appreciated with this beautiful illustration. Note in particular the specialisation of cortical cells and the way this affects their… Read More »How to build a General Intelligence: Circuits and Pathways
Figure 1: The physical architecture of general intelligence in the brain, namely the Thalamo-Cortical system. The system comprises a central hub (the Thalamus) surrounded by a surface (the Cortex, shown in blue). The Cortex is made up of a number of functionally-equivalent units called Columns. Each Column is a stack… Read More »How to Build a General Intelligence: Reverse Engineering
By Gideon Kowadlo and David Rawlinson In our last blog post, we discussed the repeating functional columnar structure of the neocortex, and the inconsistent terminology used to discuss it throughout the literature. As mentioned in that post, the function of the column is an important concept for understanding the function of the… Read More »A nomenclature for Cortical Columns and related concepts.
Cell-type-specific 3D reconstruction of five neighboring barrel columns in rat vibrissal cortex (credit: Marcel Oberlaender et al.) It is well established that there is a functional columnar structure repeated throughout the cortex across species (the concept received significant attention after a study by Mountcastle in 1957 [1]; see [2] and… Read More »Mini, macro, micro and hyper columns: confusing terminology