The brain is the ultimate computational machine in the universe. Despite what was thought about the brain decades and centuries ago, now it is well understood that the brain is a calculator, a machine that does computational things. In other words the brain is something that takes information in its input, elaborates it and then spit-out some result in form of
information or actions. If the brain is a computer, then it follows this conjecture: if we understand how our brain works, we can make computers that can think, be creative and work like a human brain (!!)
This challenging prospect is even more exiting because we know that nowadays, we DO know almost perfectly how neurons work (neurons are the only active element in the brain). Brains are neural networks. Nevertheless, we do NOT know now how the brain works, however if we could undertand that, it will be the most important discovery in human history.
Brain has been studied by life science people. Instead, Brain is a computational machine, it does computation. We need ALSO physicists, mathematicians and engineers to understand the Brain! In this talk I will explain why we have to study the brain, I will explain how recent scientist look at the brain as a computational machine, and give insight on the latest science related to brain functioning and artificial intelligence based on real brains.