Title: The Birth of the Mind: From 30,000 Genes to
20 Billion Neurons
Gary Marcus
Abstract:
Contemporary cognitive
science presents with a puzzle. On the one hand, there is ample evidence to
suggest that the mind of a newborn is far from a blank slate; on the other
hand, there is ample evidence that the genome is far from a blueprint. In this
talk, I review recent results from developmental biology and developmental
neuroscience that can help to resolve this apparent tension, and use then use
those results to motivate a new type of computer simulation that marries genes
and neural networks.