Dharmendra S. Modha

"The 2008 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience was awarded jointly to Pasko Rakic, of the Yale University School of Medicine, US, Thomas Jessell, of Columbia University, US, and Sten Grillner, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who collectively have deciphered the basic mechanisms that govern the development and functioning of the networks of cells in the brain and spinal cord.

"The first Kavli Prize in Neuroscience recognizes a confluence of career achievements that together provide a fundamental understanding of how brain and spinal cord circuits are assembled during development and function in the adult. The members of the Kavli Neuroscience Prize Committee have decided to reward three scientists jointly "for discoveries on the developmental and functional logic of neuronal circuits". 

"Pasko Rakic performed groundbreaking studies of the developing cerebral cortex, including the discovery of how radial glia guide the neuronal migration that establishes cortical layers, and formulated the radial unit hypothesis with its implications for cortical connectivity and evolution.

"Thomas Jessell discovered molecular principles governing the specification and patterning of different neuron types and the development of their synaptic interconnection into sensorimotor circuits.

"Sten Grillner elucidated principles of network organization in the vertebrate locomotor central pattern generator, along with its command systems and sensory and higher order control.

"The discoveries of Rakic, Jessell and Grillner provide a framework for how neurons obtain their identities and ultimate locations, establish appropriate connections with each other, and how the resultant neuronal networks operate. Their work has significantly advanced our understanding of brain development and function and created new opportunities for the treatment of neurological disorders. Each has pioneered an important area of neuroscience research and left a legacy of exceptional scientific achievement, insight, communication, mentoring and leadership."

For details, please see.

Yesterday, along with my colleagues, I attended the open house at the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in UC Berkeley. The center is part of Helen Wilis Neuroscience Institute. I had a chance to spend time with Jeff Hawkins, Horst Simon, Robert Knight, Bruno Olshausen, Fritz Sommer, Michael DeWeese, Pentti Kanerva, and many others

The center was initially founded by Jeff Hawkins as Redwood Neuosciences Institute about six years ago. Roughly, three years agao, Jeff and Dileep George branched off to found Numenta, while Bruno Olshausen and colleagues came to Berkeley.  

DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO) has recently issued a Broad Agency Announcement entitled SyNAPSE. The program is led by Dr. Todd Hylton.

Please see here for the BAA.

Here is a brief description:

"Over six decades, modern electronics has evolved through a series of major developments (e.g., transistors, integrated circuits, memories, microprocessors) leading to the programmable electronic machines that are ubiquitous today.  Owing both to limitations in hardware and architecture, these machines are of limited utility in complex, real-world environments, which demand an intelligence that has not yet been captured in an algorithmic-computational paradigm. As compared to biological systems for example, today’s programmable machines are less efficient by a factor of one million to one billion in complex, real-world environments.  The SyNAPSE program seeks to break the programmable machine paradigm and define a new path forward for creating useful, intelligent machines. 

The vision for the anticipated DARPA SyNAPSE program is the enabling of electronic neuromorphic machine technology that is scalable to biological levels.  Programmable machines are limited not only by their computational capacity, but also by an architecture requiring (human-derived) algorithms to both describe and process information from their environment.  In contrast, biological neural systems (e.g., brains) autonomously process information in complex environments by automatically learning relevant and probabilistically stable features and associations.  Since real world systems are always many body problems with infinite combinatorial complexity, neuromorphic electronic machines would be preferable in a host of applications—but useful and practical implementations do not yet exist. 

The key to achieving the vision of the SyNAPSE program will be an unprecedented multidisciplinary approach that can coordinate aggressive technology development activities in the following areas:  1) hardware; 2) architecture; 3) simulation; and 4) environment."