A Blog About Curious Things

Welcome to my site. I write about things that catch my curiosity or that I am passionate about. Currently I am a research engineer at MIT working on autonomous vehicle research, specifically how humans and AI systems can interact. I suppose you could say the ‘cognitive science of self driving cars’. I am generally interested in all things about minds, brains, and computers.

Blog

Attractor Networks, (A bit of) Computational Neuroscience Part III

September 5, 2018September 25, 2018 Jack Terwilliger

Brains are comprised of networks of neurons connected by synapses, and these networks have greater computational properties than the neurons and synapses themselves. In this post, I am going to talk about a class of neural networks which I think are fascinating: attractor networks. These are recurrent neural networks with attractor states; these states and … Continue reading “Attractor Networks, (A bit of) Computational Neuroscience Part III”

Synapses, (A Bit of) Biological Neural Networks – Part II

July 21, 2018August 26, 2018 Jack Terwilliger

Synapses are the couplings between neurons, allowing signals to pass from one neuron to another. However, synapses are much more than mere relays: they play an important role in neural computation. The ongoing dramas of excitation and inhibition and of synaptic potentiation and depression give rise to your abilities to make decisions, learn, and remember. … Continue reading “Synapses, (A Bit of) Biological Neural Networks – Part II”

(A Bit of) Biological Neural Networks – Part I, Spiking Neurons

March 2, 2018September 21, 2018 Jack Terwilliger

Neurons are cells — small bodies of mostly water, ions, amino acids and proteins with remarkable electrochemical properties. They are the primary functional units of the brain. Our mental experiences — our perceptions, memories, and thoughts — are the result of the ebb and flow of salts across neural bi-lipid membranes and the synaptic transmissions … Continue reading “(A Bit of) Biological Neural Networks – Part I, Spiking Neurons”