Artificial Neural Nets

[Greg Francis]

> In article <3ngtbp$pgs at news.tuwien.ac.at>, e8627164 at fbma.tuwien.ac.at (Otto Hain
> zl) writes:
> >Daniel Rabinovitch (drabinov at cs.cornell.edu) wrote:
> >I think the flow is from natural NN's to artificial NN's but never back.
> >This means that the artificial neuronal networks are modeled after there
> >natural counterpart but not for giving feedback on the research done there.
> >Same with genetic algorithms.
> >
> >Otto

This is an interesting claim. A colleague and I were discussing just last week that  
we could not think of a single example (outside of visual perception) where studies  
of real neuronal networks have lead to a better understanding of a specific aspect  
of human cognitive behavior. 

Can anybody give me examples where neurophysiology studies produced better (or even  
different) theories of cognition? (I will not accept general claims of modularity,  
distributed coding, and the like, I am looking for something specific.)

It seems to me that the direction is mostly the _reverse_ of the above claim.  
Researchers look for neurophysiological evidence of cognitive theories (whether they  
be guised as neural networks or otherwise).
--
Greg Francis, PhD    | "It's the opposite of fun. It's golf."
Cognitive Psychology | Ellen Degeneres, "These Friends Of Mine"
Purdue University    | http://www.psych.purdue.edu/cognitive.html
Assistant Professor  | NeXTMail OK.