[Tyler]

Ephaptic Coupling in Brain Offers New Understanding
     







Mimicking the human brain may be even harder than expected.
For decades researchers have attempted to decode the inner workings of
our grey matter and much progress has been made in the area of neural
networks, but recent work by neuroscientists at Caltech are offering yet
another mechanism crucial to brain function - ephaptic
coupling.  It was once thought that neural processing was performed
entirely via synapses (junctions between neurons), but now it's believed
that information is also transmitted through extracellular electric
fields throughout the brain.
This epiphenomenon allows groups of neurons to influence each other
without physical connection complicating our understanding of this
remarkable machine.
Of course this also raises new questions about the effects of external
electrical fields on our thinking processes.


   

http://robots.net/article/3101.html
     

[GT40]

That's why I love Second Life so much. No stupid AI brains working inside residents. Just ordinary real people hidden behind an avatar.

Can you imagine a more realistic bot?