Center for Research in Computational Neuro-Cognition

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This Biological Facilities Center proposal requests funds to purchase a Thinking Machines CMlB Connection Machine with l6,384 processing elements and 64 Kbits of memory per element for the Center for Research in Computational Neuro-Cognition. This machine is one of the most powerful computers in the world owing to the extraordinary degree of parallelism it provides--up to 65,536 concurrent bit operations in the maximal configuration. It is useful primarily for executing programs that manipulate tens of thousands to millions of small, simple, interacting units, exactly the kinds of elements that are found in modeling vision systems, associative memories, and other neuro-cognitive structures as well as genetic and evolutionary data. The participants in the Center are committed to a fundamentally computational view of cognition, focusing on how humans and other animals represent and manipulate information. The Center is highly multidisciplinary, including faculty from neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, psychology, evolutionary biology, mathematics, and other departments. Specific research projects for which the connection machine will be used include: to advance a biological computation model of langugage, neuromagnetic imaging, to develop a model of recent memory, to explore analogical problem solving, to produce an automatic image identification system using biological principles based on Grossberg's theories of brain function, to develop parallel structural models of vision, and to simulate ecological and evolutionary processes.