Monday, May 16, 2011

A Schizophrenic Computer Created By Scientists

a human brain in a jarComputer networks that can't forget fast enough can show symptoms of a kind of virtual schizophrenia, giving researchers further clues to the inner workings of schizophrenic brains, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Yale University have found.
The researchers used a virtual computer model, or "neural network," to simulate the excessive release of dopamine in the brain. They found that the network recalled memories in a distinctly schizophrenic-like fashion.

Their results were published in April in Biological Psychiatry.

"The hypothesis is that dopamine encodes the importance-the salience-of experience," says Uli Grasemann, a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. "When there's too much dopamine, it leads to exaggerated salience, and the brain ends up learning from things that it shouldn't be learning from."

"It's an important mechanism to be able to ignore things," says Grasemann. "What we found is that if you crank up the learning rate in DISCERN high enough, it produces language abnormalities that suggest schizophrenia."

"Information processing in neural networks tends to be like information processing in the human brain in many ways," says Grasemann. "So the hope was that it would also break down in similar ways. And it did."

21 commentaires:

Derrick O said...

very interesting

Ross said...

read the entire thing, very very interesting

R. Mot said...

Woah. Awesome.

Anonymous said...

Just make sure they don't make a schizo robot

JDOGMMA said...

Is this the same experiment which lead to a computer think it was a terrosit? (GLADOS!!!?!?GOD HELP US).

Unknown said...

I think this pretty much confirms the matrix.

David Newsom said...

This is really cool. The only true question is is it ethical?

Crazy said...

Haha sweet :)

Xenototh said...

Oh salience, how I have taken you for granted.

Anonymous said...

Schizo computer, that's crazy...

Porkykls said...

schizophrenic computer??? even after reading, i dont understand!

strek said...

That's crazy. Hopefully it'll help them find a cure or treatment for the disease.

fit4life said...

that's insane! did they use a human brain!?

Gambling Degenerate said...

this is interesting and im looking forward to more information about this in the future. dang..

Anonymous said...

so schizophrenic patients cant ignore things? i think id rather not annoy one of them haha

baka1236 said...

interesting. i wanna do more research on it now

Alexis said...

That's amazing, it's incredible what kind of unexpected discoveries computers are leading to.

Cartoon Universe said...

I have a narcoleptic computer.

Dola said...

if comps can think we're all F-ed

Hyperion said...

Cool, understanding the causes may help to get a better treatment for it.

Trelin said...

my computer bipolar...

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