Emergence of functional architecture in natural and artificial neural networks
Date : December 6, 2023 16:00 ~
Speaker : 백세범 (카이스트 바이오 및 뇌공학과)
Professor : Prof. Dohun Kim, Prof. Sunghoon Jung, Prof. Yongjoo Baek
Location : 56동105호
How cognitive functions in the brain arises initially is still unclear – whether they require supervised or unsupervised learning as in artificial neural networks, or they can emerge without training as often observed in naïve animals. In this talk, I will introduce our findings that early functional circuits and cognitive functions in the brain can emerge spontaneously, in the complete absence of training. First, I will show how the regularly structured cortical maps can arise spontaneously from simple local interactions between individual cells, implying that evolutionary variation of physical parameters may induce development of distinct functional circuitry in the brain. Second, I will show higher cognitive functions such as number sense and primitive object detection can emerge spontaneously in untrained neural networks. These results imply that the random feedforward connections in early brain circuits may be sufficient for initializing functional circuits, providing new insight into the origin of primitive cognitive functions in the brains.