A Quick Introduction to Neurons and Cell Assemblies
- Neurons are complex cells supported by glia and the rest of the
body.
- They're thought to be the basis of human (and other animal) thought.
- Computational models of neurons can be really complicated (e.g.
compartmental models) or
- really simple like the Fatiguing Leaky Integrate and Fire model
we use.
- Cell Assemblies (CAs) are a really good model of the neural basis
of concepts with sound biological support.
- They're recurrent nets of neurons that tend to have high mutual
synaptic strength.
- This reverberation enables a CA to persist afetr stimulus
ceases (STM).
- The synaptic strengths are learned by Hebbian learning (LTM).
- They can be linked to labels to provide symbols.
- Neurons can participate in multiple CAs (overlap).
- A neural network can contain neurons that aren't part of any CA.
