In the current Discover Magazine (apparently no on-line version yet) there is an article about building a digital computer that functions like a rudimentary brain.
The modern computer is designed to and does function with extremely few errors. To do this, however, requires a relatively large voltage difference between the 0 (off) state and the 1 (on) state. This is to eliminate ambiguity about which state a bit is in. The drawback is that the computer has a high energy demand.
A human brain, on the other hand, operates with a vastly smaller energy demand. It does this by having the 0 (off) state and the 1 (on) state being much closer to being the same. This, however, results in the brain's individual little activities being highly error prone.
The human brain compensates for this error prone nature by doing operations in a highly redundant fashion. Then the results of all these error prone functions are compared and a consensus value results.
The bottom line is that the brain evolved for energy efficiency. The effort in the new computer design is to mimic this efficiency.
That's my off the cuff don't have the magazine with me summary. I think it ties into the theme of this topic. Of course, I really must throw in the "or something like that" disclaimer
Moose
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