Dharmendra S. Modha

My Work and Thoughts.

A Proposal for a Decade of the Mind Initiative

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A few weeks back, we published a letter in Science proposing the Decade of the Mind initiative.

James S. Albus, George A. Bekey, John H. Holland, Nancy G. Kanwisher, Jeffrey L. Krichmar, Mortimer Mishkin, Dharmendra S. Modha, Marcus E. Raichle, Gordon M. Shepherd, and Giulio Tononi, "A Proposal for a Decade of the Mind Initiative" Science [Letter], Vol 317, Issue 5843, 7 September 2007:1321.

“What Makes Up My Mind?”

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Today, Washington Post carried a wonderful piece on the Decade of the Mind Proposal.  Here are some excerpts:

Earlier this year, Jim Olds gathered a bunch of big thinkers at George Mason University for a two-day conference on the mind. He and his allies want the federal government to invest $4 billion in an initiative that would be called the "Decade of the Mind." This would be a follow-up to a 1990s program called the "Decade of the Brain," which brought increased attention to neuroscience. The new initiative would be an attempt to take science into a realm previously explored only by philosophers, theologians and mountaintop yogis.

"Brain science is an exhaustive collection of facts without a theory," Olds says. "This is for the nation as a whole to invest in one of the fundamental intellectual questions of what it is to be a human being." 

In a letter published a few weeks ago in the journal Science, 10 scientists said that a Decade of the Mind would help us understand mental disorders that affect 50 million Americans and cost more than $400 billion a year. It might also aid in the development of intelligent machines and new computing techniques. A breakthrough in mind research, the scientists wrote, could have "broad and dramatic impacts on the economy, national security, and our social well-being."

Ten years and $4 billion: That’s a reasonable cost. The evolution of the human mind is arguably the most important biological event in the history of our planet since the origin of life itself.

We should try to understand how the brain makes the mind. And then we can make up our minds about what to do with ourselves.

“Computers to rival humans, predicts IBM exec”

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Visionary IBM executive, Alfred Zollar, General Manager of Tivoli Software, said in his keynote address  ‘Innovation that matters’ at GITEX Technology Week:

"By 2010, supercomputers will execute one quadrillion calculations per second. We will have computing capacity that operates at the same speed as the human brain."

See here for the press article.

Robert Dougherty: The Neuroanatomy of Reading Development

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Yesterday, we had the pleasure of a great talk from Dr. Robert Dougherty.

ABSTRACT

Proficient reading is an impressive skill that requires precise coordination of various cognitive, sensory, and motor systems. I will describe measurements of functional and anatomical development in the visual pathways of children that are essential for reading. We have found several functional and anatomical measures that are correlated with the development of reading skills, including: 1. fMRI word visibility responsivity to an incidental reading task in ventral occipito-temporal cortex, 2. fMRI contrast responsivity in human MT+ to drifting gratings, and 3. diffusion tensor imaging measurements in several regions within the white matter, including the splenium of the corpus callosum. These functional and anatomical results implicate a network of visual regions important for skilled reading and are clinically relevant to understanding healthy reading development and identifying reading disabilities.

BIOGRAPHY

The goal of my research is to understand the brain circuits that are crucial for skilled reading and to chart the development of these circuits in children. I specialize in measuring the structure and function of the human brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). By combining these brain measurements with careful measurements of behavior, we can understand the intimate connection between brain maturation and the development of complex behaviors such as skilled reading. I received my BA from Rutgers University in 1991 and my PhD in experimental psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1996. I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia and BC’s Children’s Hospital Visual Neuroscience Lab. It was there that I began to investigate the perceptual aspects of reading and reading disabilities in children. I continue to study reading development as project lead of the NIH-funded SIRL Longitudinal Study of Reading Development.

Dr. Benjamin Mann’s 23 Mathematical Challenges

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At DARPATECH 2007, Dr. Benjamin Mann presented his list of 23 mathematical challenges in his talk "DSO Mathematics: The Heart and Soul of the Far Side". The reader will no doubt notice that his first challenge is to my liking.

  1. The Mathematics of the Brain:  Develop a mathematical theory to build a functional model of the brain that is mathematically consistent and predictive rather than merely biologically inspired.
  2. The Dynamics of Networks: Develop the high-dimensional mathematics needed to accurately model and predict behavior in large-scale distributed networks that evolve over time occurring in communication, biology and the social sciences
  3. Capture and Harness Stochasticity in Nature: Address Mumford’s call for new mathematics for the 21st Century.  Develop methods that capture persistence in stochastic environments.
  4. 21st Century Fluids: Classical fluid dynamics and the Navier-Stokes Equation were extraordinarily successful in obtaining quantitative understanding of shock waves, turbulence, and solitons, but new methods are needed to tackle complex fluids such as foams, suspensions, gels and liquid crystals.
  5. Biological Quantum Field Theory: quantum and statistical methods have had great success modeling virus evolution.  Can such techniques be used to model more complex systems such as bacteria?  Can these techniques be used to control pathogen evolution?
  6. Computational Duality:  Duality in mathematics has been a profound tool for theoretical understanding.  Can it be extended to develop principled computational techniques where duality and geometry are the basis for novel algorithms?
  7. Occam’s Razor in Many Dimensions: As data collection increases can we “do more with less” by finding lower bounds for sensing complexity in systems?  This is related to questions about entropy maximization algorithms.
  8. Beyond Convex Optimization: Can linear algebra be replaced by algebraic geometry in a systematic way?
  9. What are the Physical Consequences of Perelman’s proof of Thurston’s Geometrization Theorem?  Can profound theoretical advances in understanding three dimensions be applied to construct and manipulate structures across scales to fabricate novel materials?
  10. Algorithmic Origami and Biology:  Build a stronger mathematical theory for isometric and rigid embedding that can give insight into protein folding.
  11. Optimal Nanostructures: Develop new mathematics for constructing optimal globally symmetric structures by following simple local rules via the process of nanoscale self-assembly.
  12. The Mathematics of Quantum Computing, Algorithms, and Entanglement: In the last century we learned how quantum phenomena shape our world.  In the coming century we need to develop the mathematics required to control the quantum world.
  13. Creating a Game Theory that Scales: What new scalable mathematics is needed to replace the traditional PDE approach to differential games?
  14. An Information Theory for Virus Evolution: Why not?
  15. The Geometry of Genome Space: What notion of distance is needed to incorporate biological utility?
  16. What are the Symmetries and action Principles for Biology?  Extend our understand of symmetries and action principles in biology along the lines of classical thermodynamics, to include important biological concepts such as robustness, modularity, evolvability and variability.
  17. Geometric Langlands and Quantum Physics: How does Langlands program, which originated in number theory and representation theory, explain the fundamental symmetries of physics?  And vice versa?
  18. Arithmetic Langlands, Topology, and Geometry.  What is the role of homotopy theory in the classical, geometric, and quantum Langlands programs?
  19. Settle the Riemann Hypothesis: the Holy Grail of number theory.
  20. Computation at Scale: how can we develop asymptotics for a world with massively many degrees of freedom?
  21. Settle the Hodge Conjecture:  the conjecture in algebraic geometry is a metaphor for transforming transcendental computations into algebraic ones.
  22. Settle the smooth Pioncare Conjecture in Dimension 4.  What are the implications for space-time and cosmology?  And might the answer unlock the secret of “dark energy”?
  23. What are the fundamental laws of biology?  Dr. Tether’s question will remain front and center in the next 100 years.  I place this challenge last as finding these laws will undoubtedly require the mathematics developed in answering several of the questions listed above.