Page 46 - Artificial Intelligence in the Age of Neural Networks and Brain Computing

2. A Theoretical Method for Linking Brain to Mind 33

begin to understand the neural mechanisms and behavioral symptoms of mental
disorders on a continuum with neural mechanisms and behavioral properties of
typical behaviors.
Said in another way, after one does with due diligence discover and characterize
the brain mechanisms of normal behaviors, mechanistic explanations of clinical data
automatically emerge from these theories. In a similar way, the discovery of key brain
mechanisms, circuits, and architectures to explain one kind of data has often thrust me
into explanations of other, seemingly quite different, kinds of data where variations
and specialization of these mechanisms, circuits, and architectures are also operative.
In this sense, by getting the theoretical foundations of biological intelligence right,
one can then begin to reap the benefits of the gift that never stops giving.

2. A THEORETICAL METHOD FOR LINKING BRAIN TO MIND:
THE METHOD OF MINIMAL ANATOMIES
One cannot hope to derive a unified theory of an entire brain in one step, and one
should not try to do so. Rather, this grand goal can be achieved incrementally, in
stages, starting with a large behavioral database that excites a theorist’s imagination
(Fig. 2.1). The derivation begins with behavioral data because brain evolution needs
to achieve behavioral success. Starting with behavioral data enables models to be
derived whose brain mechanisms have been shaped during evolution by behavioral
success. Starting with a large database helps to rule out incorrect, but otherwise
seemingly plausible, models of how a brain works.
Such a derivation has always led in the past to the discovery of novel design prin-
ciples and mechanisms (Fig. 2.1) with which to explain how an individual, behaving

FIGURE 2.1
A modeling method and cycle that clarifies how increasingly refined neural models can
explain and predict increasingly large interdisciplinary behavioral and neurobiological
databases.