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Nathan Renegar's avatar

As a graduate student working at an intersection of electrical engineering and neuroscience, this book has given me a really good perspective and resonated with an issue I've felt as I've learned more about neuroscience. My lab focuses on studying and implementing neural circuits in silicon to solve robotics problems (e.g., navigation, obstacle avoidance, sonar). Because we implement analogs of these circuits in silicon, my knowledge of neuroscience is mostly at the single cell & microcircuit levels. A gaping hole of how low level phenomenon -- ion channel kinetics, dendritic morphology, etc. -- actually come together to form a functioning nervous system has always bothered me.

I could tell you how a transistor fits into the landscape of a processor, but I couldn't tell you the same about a single neuron. A theory of consciousness feels like the target we need to sew together the fragments of neuroscience. Shannon had the theory of Boolean logic when he figured out that you could implement such a theory with circuits. What's our theory?

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Corey Smith's avatar

I am embarrassingly broke right now; otherwise, I would've bought and read your new book already. However, I requested the book at my local public library last week. So I hope that goes through because I am eager to read it.

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