Science · 2012 · 963 citations · 51 references
Life SciencesNeurobiologyNeuroscienceNeuroanatomyNeurophysiologySystems NeuroscienceFunctional NeuroanatomyLarge-scale Brain SimulationNeural Circuit ModelingNeural CircuitsNeural ModelingNeural System ModelingAnimal Models Of BehaviorBiophysically Detailed Neuron ModelsCognitive Neuroscience ModelingComputational Neuroscience ModelsNeurophysiology Of Behavior
Relating complex animal behavior to equally complex brain activity remains a central challenge, and existing large‑scale neural models have yet to bridge this gap. The study introduces Spaun, a 2.5‑million‑neuron brain model that bridges the gap between neural activity and biological function by exhibiting diverse behaviors. Spaun receives visual image sequences and generates responses through a physically modeled arm, leveraging a 2.5‑million‑neuron architecture. The model successfully reproduces key neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and behavioral features across eight diverse tasks.
A central challenge for cognitive and systems neuroscience is to relate the incredibly complex behavior of animals to the equally complex activity of their brains. Recently described, large-scale neural models have not bridged this gap between neural activity and biological function. In this work, we present a 2.5-million-neuron model of the brain (called "Spaun") that bridges this gap by exhibiting many different behaviors. The model is presented only with visual image sequences, and it draws all of its responses with a physically modeled arm. Although simplified, the model captures many aspects of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and psychological behavior, which we demonstrate via eight diverse tasks.
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Choice Reviews Online · 2005 · 4.7K citations
Discrete fixed-resolution representations in visual working memory
Weiwei Zhang, Steven J. Luck · Nature · 2008 · 1.7K citations · Full text