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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black">Dear colleagues,<o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black">I would like to bring to your attention a book that has just been published. The book,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Mechanisms-Cognitive-Phenomena-Activity-dp-1525597906/dp/1525597906/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1631881084" style="color:rgb(149, 79, 114);text-decoration:underline">Brain
Mechanisms: Linking Cognitive Phenomena to Neuron Activity<span style="font-style:normal">,</span></a></span></i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>describes how to understand higher cognition in
terms of anatomical, physiological and chemical processes in the brain using techniques based on how we understand the operation of complex electronic systems.<o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">A brain has absolutely no resemblance to an electronic system. Nevertheless, how we go about understanding complex electronic systems has some important lessons for how to go about understanding the brain.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black">Brains have huge numbers of neurons, and understanding obviously cannot be based on<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">simultaneously<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black">imagining
the ongoing activity of all these neurons. Some way must be found to organize all this information in a way humans can handle.<o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"> <o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">A complex computing system can have hundreds of billions of components like transistors. Engineers could not design such systems by simultaneously imagining the activity of all the components that could be
involved. Rather, the design information is organized in such a way that all design tasks are within the mental bandwidth of a human designer. The techniques to achieve this involve hierarchies of description, carefully managed use of approximation, and the
ubiquitous use of just two types of information process: instructions and data read/writes.</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black">N</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">atural selection pressures have resulted in brain architectures to which analogous techniques for organizing information can be applied.
The pressures have resulted in the ubiquitous presence of two types of information processes in the brain, condition definition/detections and behavioural recommendation definition/integrations. These information processes are completely different from those
in computing systems, but they allow creation of analogous hierarchies of description. Such hierarchies of description make it possible to achieve an intuitively satisfying understanding of human memory, consciousness and self-awareness in terms of the activity
of the billions of neurons.</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://www.landrewcoward.com/blog.html" style="color:rgb(149, 79, 114);text-decoration:underline"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">blog</span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>touches
on some of these ideas.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black">The book is available at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Mechanisms-Cognitive-Phenomena-Activity-dp-1525597906/dp/1525597906/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1631881084" style="color:rgb(149, 79, 114);text-decoration:underline"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">Amazon.com</span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<a href="https://www.landrewcoward.com/brain-mechanisms-293375.html" style="color:rgb(149, 79, 114);text-decoration:underline"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">Download a sample chapter</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif"></span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibl-i7-ie6I" style="color:rgb(149, 79, 114);text-decoration:underline"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">Video of recent lecture at Florida State University</span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:blue"></span><i><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:rgb(10, 26, 255)"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">Andrew Coward<o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">Australian National University<o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">Canberra<o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<span style="caret-color:rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri, sans-serif"><a href="https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/coward-a" style="color:rgb(149, 79, 114);text-decoration:underline"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman", serif">https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/coward-a</span></a></span><span style="caret-color:rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:-webkit-standard;font-size:medium;display:inline !important"></span><br>
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