March 17,
2007
Copyright © 2007 ECYPH LLC
All Rights Reserved
What
von Neumann knew of the brain
•Von Neumann was very knowledgable about the human brain! (Check out his book on the topic.)
•His work on the brain was interrupted by his death and
is the part of his body of
work left incomplete.
•One can directly trace the roots of modern computer architecture to the ideas von Neumann had of the human brain.
•Von Neumann in his final work spoke of an internal “language” of the brain expressed in the periodic
signals of individual neurons,
bundled together in fibers. Such an arrangement allows for high-precision operations with
low arithmetic and logical
depth. He noted that this language is quite different from our conventional ideas
of language.
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