Brain architecture: A design for natural computation

The relation between the computer and the brain has always been of interest to scientists and the public alike. From the notion of'thinking machines' and'artificial intelligence' to applying concepts of neuroscience such as neural networks to solve problems in computer science. Also the earliest computers, using the von Neumann architecture still in use today, used memory and a central processing unit based on concepts of brain architecture (von Neumann, 1958). Also, models of artificial neural networks were inspired by the function of individual neurons as integrators of incoming signals. Detailed models of neural processing, however, are often limited to single tasks (e.g., pattern recognition) and one modality (e.g., only visual information). In addition, artificial neural networks starting with Perceptrons (Rosenblatt, 1959) are designed as a general purpose architecture whereas the architecture of natural neural systems shows a high specialization according to different tasks and functions.