Human brain is one of the most complex structures with hundreds
of billions of neurons and hundreds of trillions of synapses. By looking at
these numbers we can say that studying how our brain functions is not an easy
task. It is a mystery since our evolution. Scientists and neurobiologists have
been trying to study and understand the brain functions for decades (Well, they
are able to find many details but there is still more to discover.) This field
of study, as you might have guessed by now is called Computational
neuroscience.
Computational neuroscience is not a single man army (by
which I mean, it is not a stand-alone field.) In fact, it is an interdisciplinary science that uses computer
science (mathematics, physics and electric engineering) programs and models to
construct biophysically detailed simulations of various parts of brain to study
in detail and understand each part/section of brain. The study results and
understanding from computational neuroscience can be used in other fields such
as machine learning to create artificial neural networks (ANN’s.) These ANN’s
can then be trained to perform functions that human brain can do such as identifying
patterns, numbers, objects, face recognition, etc. Although it does not seem to
be realistic to design and train an ANN which exactly mimics the human brain,
but with more advancements in computational neuroscience we may see ANN’s that
perform some major functions of brain like show emotions, react to various
situations, etc.
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