Why do we use computers as a model to understand the brain?

It is common to open a technological blog and find an analogy between the human mind and a processor .For some reason, the current personal computer, or supercomputers locked in silos, are the best technological approach to brain.And therefore to the psyche.

But, How did societies see technology with technology prior to ours? With what technology did the brain function compare when the chips did not sound? We review the different (scientific) ways of understanding how the mind works .

The brain works like a big boiler

Or, at least, like the pipes, gray hair and ducts that connect the pump that is the heart to the blood vessels that branch into the brain.In the 18th century, James Watt's coetaneos (the inventor of the machine of steam) saw the system formed by the heart and brain in the form of tubular boilers .

By 1790 nothing was newer than the boiler that evolved in the steam engine.So the brain, the best known machine in the universe, had to work with a similar technology.So, if not, it had all those veins and arteries coming and going from the heart?

Why do we use computers as a model to understand the brain?

Although today it is basic physics, at that time the boilers (like the Trevithick of 1802) were cutting-edge technology.By using some fuel, such as coal, a water tank was heated at high temperatures. The high pressure steam was then released, producing movement.

It is not surprising that the doctors of the Industrial Revolution found certain similarities between the heart and this boiler, and between the brain and the piping system that carried the pressure.The idea of the brain as a system of valves pneumatics was also extended during the 19th, during the expansionist era of the railways.

The brain works like the electrical network

By 1900 the steam engine was still important, but the electrification of cities and the elimination of the Second Industrial (electrical) Revolution set aside something as vast as pressurized water.

If the brain was something, it was elegance. The brain would have more to do with electricity than with gross locomotives.Kolliker, Golgi and Ramon and Cajal were pioneers in the study of the brain.quite correctly) huge neural systems with the help of microscopes.

Why do we use computers as a model to understand the brain?

Turned to the left, semi-schematic drawing of a portion of a vertical section of the olfactory bulb of a dog.Golgi, 1875.

The discovery that the human being had a nervous system driven by electricity only fueled the scientific fire around the brain.This looked like a wire marana (similar to those of the telephone exchanges of The girls of the cable ) in which different electrical signals came and went.Boosted, this was discovered later, thanks to chemical reactions .

Why do we use computers as a model to understand the brain?

Cerebelium, structure of the nerve centers of birds.Cajal, 1905.

Ramon and Cajal's drawings of that time are well known.Since electricity was the engine of society, it was obvious to imagine a brain wired .

The brain works like a processor

Today we see the brain in a quite different way.We compare it with one of humanity's greatest inventions to date: chips and processors.The brain, according to neurologist David Eagleman, is «a machine multipurpose information processing ».Today we are aware that, if there is a unique me , it is in the« brain, [...] locked in a silent vault and darkness in the skull ».

The hands, ears and eyes are nothing but evolutionary plugins , but this does not mean that we cannot connect more senses to this machine multiproposito.In the same way that a processor can connect to an infinity of external devices, the brain can also do it.

It is the key idea behind Neuralink, Elon Musk's next big leap.This is intended to merge the human being with artificial intelligence using the brain as a base.The objective? May humanity not fall behind with the evolution IA.

Why do we use computers as a model to understand the brain?

Neuroscientists, businessmen and even modern thinkers, such as Yuval Noah Harari, emphasize the importance of information processing as a key in our development; they even put before humanity all that system that processes information faster than human beings.

It is true that the brain works with blood vessels under pressure, it uses stop valves, electrochemical impulses and nodes that transmit information at high speed.None of the scientific approaches to the brain have been wrong (although none has been wrong complete).

Given how easy it is to hide something in the brain for centuries, what future technology will explain a little more something that today we are unable to see in the brain? Today, comparing the brain with a boiler is childish.In 100 years, will we see it compared with a processor?

Images | Seanbatty, Science Museum, CSIC, Cajal and his drawings, Cerebellum, Pete Linforth

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