Abstract
Theories of computation and theories of the brain have close historical interrelations, the best-known examples being Turing’s introspective use of the brain’s operation as a model for his idealized computing machine (Turing 1936), McCulloch’s and Pitts’ use of ideal switching elements to model the brain (McCulloch and Pitts 1943), and von Neumann’s comparison of the logic and physics of both brains and computers (von Neumann 1958).
Reprinted from Physics and Mathematics of the Nervous System, M. Conrad, W. Güttinger, Eds. Lecture Notes in Biomathematics 4. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer-Verlag, 1974, pp. 128–148.
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This work was supported in part by grant from National Aeronautics and Space Administration, No. NGR 33-015-002.
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Pattee, H.H. (2012). Discrete and Continuous Processes in Computers and Brains. In: LAWS, LANGUAGE and LIFE. Biosemiotics, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5161-3_8
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