Principles of Neural Design

567 Pages·2015·21.025 MB·English

by  Peter Sterling, Simon Laughlin

Principles of Neural Design
Principles
Compute with chemistry
Compute directly with analog primitives
Combine analog and pulsatile processing
Sparsify
Send only what is needed
Send at the lowest acceptable rate
Minimize wire
Make neural components irreducibly small
Complicate
Adapt, match, learn, and forget
Principles of Neural Design
Peter Sterling and Simon Laughlin
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2015 M assachusetts Institute of Technology

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sterling, Peter (Professor of neuroscience), author.
Principles of neural design / Peter Sterling and Simon Laughlin.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-02870-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
I. Laughlin, Simon, author. II. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Brain— physiology. 2. Learning. 3. Neural Pathways. WL 300]
QP376
612.8’2— dc23
2014031498

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Sally Zigmond and Barbara Laughlin

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
1 What Engineers Know about Design 1
2 Why an Animal Needs a Brain 11
3 Why a Bigger Brain? 41
4 How Bigger Brains Are Organized 57
5 Information Processing: From Molecules to Molecular Circuits 105
6 Information Processing in Protein Circuits 125
7 Design of Neurons 155
8 How Photoreceptors Optimize the Capture of Visual Information 195
9 The Fly Lamina: An Efficient Interface for High-Speed Vision 235
10 Design of Neural Circuits: Recoding Analogue Signals to Pulsatile 265
11 Principles of Retinal Design 277
12 Beyond the Retina: Pathways to Perception and Action 323
13 Principles of Efficient Wiring 363
14 Learning as Design/Design of Learning 399
15 Summary and Conclusions 433
Principles of Neural Design 445
Notes 447
References 465
Index 519

Preface
Neuroscience abounds with stories of intellectual and technical daring.
Every peak has its Norgay and Hillary, and we had imagined telling some
favorite stories of heroic feats, possibly set off in little boxes. Yet, this has
been well done by others in various compendia and reminiscences (Straus-
field, 2012; Glickstein, 2014; Kandel, 2006; Koch, 2012). Our main goal is
to evince some principles of design and note some insights that follow.
Stories deviating from this intention would have lengthened the book and
distracted from our message, so we have resisted the natural temptation to
memoir-ize.
Existing compendia tend to credit various discoveries to particular
individuals. This belongs to the storytelling. What interest would there
be to the Trojan Wars without Odysseus and Agamemnon? On the other
hand, dropping a name here and there distorts the history of the
discovery process— where one name may stand for a generation of thought-
ful and imaginative investigators. Consequently, in addition to forgoing
stories, we forgo dropping names — except for a very few who early enunci-
ated the core principles. Nor do the citations document who did what first;
rather they indicate where supporting evidence will be found— o ften
a review.
Existing compendia often pause to explain the ancient origins of various
terms, such as cerebellum or hippocampus. This might have been useful
when most neuroscientists spoke a language based in Latin and Greek, but
now with so many native speakers of Mandarin or Hindi the practice seems
anachronistic, and we have dropped it. Certain terms may be unfamiliar to
readers outside neuroscience, such as physicists and engineers. These are
italicized at their first appearance to indicate that they are technical (c ation
channel ). A reader unfamiliar with this term can learn by Googling in 210
ms that “ cation channels a re pore-forming proteins that help establish and con-
trol the small voltage gradient across the plasma membrane of all living cells . . . ”