Single cortical neurons as deep artificial neural networks
ANN neurons are Pitts-McCulloch neurons, an extremely stylized model of the 1940's understanding of neurons. Each neuron represents a dot product plus a function application.<p>A biological neuron is 6e17 Daltons[0], so on the order of <i>quadrillions</i> of atoms. A single synapse is a huge landscape studded with receptors of various kinds, and the whole thing is swimming in salt solution where chemicals diffuse stochastically. And then there's the glia.<p>This is why I dismiss any claims about the computational power of the human brain, most of which seem to begin with the assumption that "1 spike = 1 FLOP", and that'll all that goes on in the brain.<p>[0]: <a href="https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html" rel="nofollow">https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html</a> and <a href="https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1E-06+grams+in+dalton" rel="nofollow">https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1E-06+grams+in+dalton</a>