Thoughts on Basal Ganglia

Its amazing how our brain manages to process and store information that will be recollected at the time we need them. Additionally, “chunking” our routine activities into habits is astonishing, making way for more process intensive tasks such as having a conversation while driving, or coming up with a maneuver while guarding a basketball from an opponent1. Having very little personal knowledge about machine learning, I suppose, most of the functions of a neural network are derived from the functions of our #Basal Ganglia. Neural networks are fed with information trained to soon become autonomous with making particulars decision. Similarly, we train ourselves to do specific activities over and over until we become good at the activity that it even becomes second nature to us.

Maybe someday, when computer science and neurology are completely married, we can expand our mental capacity not by making our brains bigger, but by expanding our capacity to store habits, which would effectively enhance our memory recollection and use less energy to retrieve and store information.

Resources

  1. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg - Chapter 1: The Habit Loop

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