I'm a computer expert but a brain newbie.
The typical CPU is built from n-NOR, n-NAND, and NOT gates. The NOT gates works like a 1-NAND or a 1-NOR (they're the same thing, electronically). Everything else, including AND and OR, are made from those three. The actual logic only requires NOT and {1 of AND, OR, NAND, NOR}. Notice there are several sets of minimum gates and and a larger set of used gates.
The brain (I'm theorizing now, I have no background in neural chemistry) has a similar set of basic gates that can be organized into a Turing machine, and the gate I described previously is one of them.
The brain (I'm theorizing now, I have no background in neural chemistry) has a similar set of basic gates that can be organized into a Turing machine, and the gate I described previously is one of them.
No.
You can represent logic gates using neural circuits, and use them to describe arbitrary finite-state automata that generalize into Turing-complete automata in the limit of infinite size (or by adding an infinite external memory), but that's not how the brain is organized, and it would be difficult to have any learning in a system constucted in this way.
Previous Open Thread: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/k9x/open_thread_may_26_june_1_2014/
(oops, we missed a day!)
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