Physicists Explore Human and Artificial Intelligence

Buhmann J, Divko R, Ritter H, Schulten K. Physicists Explore Human and Artificial Intelligence. In: Clementi E, Chin S, eds. Structure and Dynamics of Nucleic Acids, Proteins, and Membranes. New York: Springer; 1987: 301-327.The foundation of modern brain theory1 is based on the epochal work of the physiologist Sherrington and the anatomist Cajal at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both established the modern view of neural networks as heterogeneous systems composed of single subunits, the neurons. They rejected the theory of Golgi and others that the brain is a continuous net of axons and neurons. Sherrington investigated the electrical firing of neurons and introduced the terminus “synapse” for the connection between the individual neurons. These ideas which drove away the animal ghosts of the continuum theory have been spectacularly confirmed half a century later by electron microscopy photographs of neurons and synapses