Lifeboat Foundation

Why did the experience of consciousness evolve from our underlying brain physiology? Despite being a vibrant area of neuroscience, current research on consciousness is characterised by disagreement and controversy – with several rival theories in contention.

A recent scoping review of over 1,000 articles identified over 20 different theoretical accounts. Philosophers like David Chalmers argue that no single scientific theory can truly explain consciousness.

We define consciousness as embodied subjective awareness, including self awareness. In a recent article published in Interalia (which is not peer reviewed), we argue that one reason for this predicament is the powerful role played by intuition.

Understand the difference between self-awareness and consciousness and learn key ways of how to raise your self-awareness and consciousness.

Neuromorphic computing memristors are attractive to construct low-power-consumption electronic textiles. Here, authors report an ultralow-power textile memristor network of Ag/MoS2/HfAlOx/carbon nanotube with reconfigurable characteristics and firing energy consumption of 1.9 fJ/spike.

Recently, computation in memory becomes very hot due to the urgent needs of high computing efficiency in artificial intelligence applications. In contrast to von-neumann architecture, computation in memory technology avoids the data movement between CPU/GPU and memory which could greatly reduce the power consumption. Memristor is one ideal device which could not only store information with multi-bits, but also conduct computing using ohm’s law. To make the best use of the memristor in neuromorphic systems, a memristor-friendly architecture and the software-hardware collaborative design methods are essential, and the key problem is how to utilize the memristor’s analog behavior. We have designed a generic memristor crossbar based architecture for convolutional neural networks and perceptrons, which take full consideration of the analog characteristics of memristors. Furthermore, we have proposed an online learning algorithm for memristor based neuromorphic systems which overcomes the varation of memristor cells and endue the system the ability of reinforcement learning based on memristor’s analog behavior.

Full abstract and speaker details can be found here: https://nus.edu/3cSFD3e.

Continue reading “Neuromorphic computing with memristors: from device to system — Professor Huaqiang Wu” »

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

In the past decade, lab-grown blobs of human brain tissue began making news headlines, as they ushered in a new era of scientific discovery and raised a slew of ethical questions.

These blobs — scientifically known as brain organoids, but often called “minibrains” in the news — serve as miniature, simplified models of full-size human brains. These organoids can potentially be useful in basic research, drug development and even computer science.

Some years ago, when he was still living in southern California, neuroscientist Christof Koch drank a bottle of Barolo wine while watching The Highlander, and then, at midnight, ran up to the summit of Mount Wilson, the 5,710-foot peak that looms over Los Angeles.

After an hour of “stumbling around with my headlamp and becoming nauseated,” as he later described the incident, he realized the nighttime adventure was probably not a smart idea, and climbed back down, though not before shouting into the darkness the last line of William Ernest Henley’s 1,875 poem “Invictus”: “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.”

@IBM Senior Vice President Darío Gil shows Richard Quest “the world’s most advanced quantum computer.”