Great question. You are the first person to ask this. I don't have time to go through each of the predictions in the book in detail, but I will share some general observations.
- Lots of neuroscientists thought the book was great and novel. Some were critical as they felt what I wrote about was not new. No one objected to what I wrote based on content, at least I am not aware of any. - When the book came out I spoke to a few neuroscientists who had read the book and had specific knowledge about some of the predictions. These conversations were a bit inconclusive, such as "there is some evidence in support but it isn't clear". No one said "yes you got this right", or "no you got this wrong", or "here is contradictory evidence". That was a little disappointing. - Many of the predictions in the book involved details of physiology and anatomy at a fine level of specificity. There has been relatively little progress made on tools that can test these predictions. Many of the funds that in the past went to anatomy and physiology have been directed to fMRI and other "hot" areas. So these kinds of in vivo cellular studies have become a bit of a back water. For example the number of people in the world who study connections in layer 1 could probably be counted on one hand and it may be as little as zero. Bottom line is there are few tools and few people who are capable of testing these predictions. - In neuroscience there isn't a history of theorists and experimentalists as you see in physics. Neuroscience experiments are hard, expensive, and can take years to complete. Because of this most experimentalists don't test other people's theories and often don't even share their data. So I wasn't expecting people to rush out and design experiments to test these predictions, and they didn't. Finally, I have not been out scouring the literature for verification of these predictions. There may be supporting or contrary evidence that I am not aware of. Jeff From: nupic [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Oreste Villa Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2013 8:41 AM To: NuPIC general mailing list. Subject: [nupic-dev] "On Intelligence" Appendix predictions.. I remember reading "On Intelligence" the first time in 2006 (then in 2009 and then few months ago). I am wondering which predictions have been confirmed or denied since the book was first published in 2004. It is almost 10 years (I know time flies when you are having fun :-) ) and I am sure there must be something new out there with respect to these predictions. I know literature is huge, but is there someone up to date that is willing to share some knowledge? Example of predictions, for people that did not read the book (not to advertise but you should read it at least once): Prediction 4 One class of cells in layers 2 and 3 should preferentially receive input from layer 6 cells in higher cortical regions. Prediction 8 Sudden understanding should result in a precise cascading of predictive activity that flows down the cortical hierarchy. (there are 11 predictions in the appendix and other through the all book) Thanks,
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