For those deeply interested and committed to getting a higher plane
of knowlege about brain function, especially those interested in vision
modeling, I would highly reccommend Crick's book: Astonishing
Hypothesis. Although I did not find the hypothesis, that consciousness
emanates from neuronal activity, that astonishing, I did find Crick's
summary of brain science cogent and illuminating: This is the only
place I know of where a serious effort to unify the disparate studies
of Artificial Intelligence simulating neural networks and current
understandings of brain anatomy have been integrated into a meaningful
whole.
My two quarrels with the book are that Crick did not give the centrality
of linguistic development adequate focus and that he makes too much
of the 'old fashioned' concepts of God as an omniscient, omnipresent
and omnipotent diety. Instead, Crick might have chosen to quarrel with the
assertion that the real God of Einstein and Spinoza is the neuron: I don't
think this is true, but Crick apparently does; yet, I'm certain that our
disagreement on this minor point did not keep me from getting a great
deal out of Astonishing Hypothesis.
Bert Gold, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco
School of Medicine
Program in Medical Genetics
