Chris Chatman on his weblog portraits a gloomy picture awaiting biologically accurate neural modeling:

By most estimates, there are 100 billion neurons in the brain. Some neurons are known to have more than 1,000 dendrites, and up to about 1,000 different branchings of their axons. There are some 50 known neurotransmitters, and who knows how many other neuromodulators may exist (hormones, neural growth factors, neurosteroids). There are also many different receptor types for each of the neurotransmitters. A conservative estimate of the number of interactions you'd have to model to be biologically accurate is somewhere around 225,000,000,000,000,000 (225 million billion).

While this is definitely true, I'm almost equally split between two positions. On one side, the situation may be even more hopeless if you agree with Eugene Izhikevich's polychronization theory:

...spiking networks with delays have more groups than neurons. Thus, the system has potentially enormous memory capacity and will never run out of groups, which could explain how networks of mere 10¹¹ neurons (the size of the human neocortex) could have such a diversity of behavior. (p.270)

At the same time, I would not try to set a goal of building/modeling/simulating something that can exhibit general purpose intelligence; after all, you don't expect to have a conversation about weather with one of the participants of the Grand Challenge. I'm more interested in building brains that demonstrate special purpose intelligence. After all, there are "only" 20000 nerve cells in Aplysia, which is a much more manageable size to model.

I'm keenly interested in modeling the smallest and simplest brain that shows signs of intelligence (defined in Cotterill's terms).

From the Duke University news release:

A single unifying physics theory can essentially describe how animals of every ilk, from flying insects to fish, get around, researchers at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and Pennsylvania State University have found.

The researchers show that so-called "constructal theory" can explain basic characteristics of locomotion for every creature -- how fast they get from one place to another and how rapidly and forcefully they step, flap or paddle in relation to their mass.

“From simple physics, based only on gravity, density and mass, you can explain within an order of magnitude many features of flying, swimming and running,” added James Marden, professor of biology at Penn State. “It doesn’t matter whether the animal has eight legs, four legs, two, even if it swims with no legs.”

First conceived by Bejan and published in 1996, the constructal law arises from the basic principle that flow systems evolve so as to minimize imperfections – energy wasted to friction or other forms of resistance – such that the least amount of useful energy is lost.

The theory applies to virtually everything that moves, Bejan said. For example, his earlier work has examined how the law explains traffic flows, the cooling of small-scale electronics and river currents

For more information about this theory see the original paper The constructal law of organization in nature: tree-shaped flows and body size.

[via primidi]