Читать книгу Neurobiology For Dummies - Frank Amthor - Страница 31

The expansion of the neocortex is reminiscent of the transition in the 1960s from analog to digital computers. When vacuum tubes and then transistors were made and handled individually, the most efficient control circuits were those in which a small number of devices modeled the control environment and generated a continuous control output from continuous inputs via the model.

But when integrated digital circuits arose using thousands and millions of transistors, it became more efficient to represent the control environment on standard microprocessors using software. This provided the advantages of acuity (insensitivity to transistor parameter values) and adaptability (software can be changed and augmented easily). The commonality of the representation and transformation of information in the cortical minicolumn appear to be an essential basis of its success in taking over the brain, and in mammals, including humans, taking over the earth.