information – Yohan J. John, PhD

Be the library you want to see in the world

By Yohan February 6, 2020Axis Praxis, Odds & Ends

I suspect that tech-induced information overload will make traditional forms of intelligence and memory more rather than less important over time. This is because natural intelligence is far more nimble…

A Clockwork Orange? (A brief musing on the concept of a neural “code”)

By Yohan July 6, 2018neurologism

I was asked this question on Quora:

Are there many layers of neural codes from the human retina to the optic nerve and the optic nerve to the brain, or are they essentially same signals relayed?

Here’s how I responded:

Here’s a question: in a system composed of clockwork, is there a “code”?

I ask this because I find that the “code” metaphor is often misleading when thinking about biology. Codes are composed of symbols. But it is not clear that neurons communicate using symbols.

In what format is information stored in the brain?

By Yohan March 22, 2018neurologism

I was asked this question on Quora.

We don’t really know. But as one of my professors once said half-jokingly, “the brain is a bag of tricks”. There is no reason to assume that all brain regions use the same coding scheme.

Here are some basic concepts that guide how neuroscientists think about information in the brain:

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