Principles of Neural Network Construction

Abstract

The central nervous systems of higher organisms are the most elaborate cellular structures produced by evolution. Understanding the nervous system is becoming the major challenge of contemporary biological research, and the field is changing very rapidly with the development and application of novel methods of molecular genetics and cell biology. Part of the difficulty of neurobiological research is that it encompasses the total range of biological levels from molecule to organism; there is an immense gap between the analysis of genes and their products and, say, the study of a language and its grammar. The connection between genes and behavior is so long and so tortuous that the field needs to be partitioned, and this is best done by separating questions of construction from those of function. Thus we need to find out how nervous systems are built and how the genes participate in this process and this is different from the second question of how nervous systems generate behavior. The structure of the nervous system is the common area which unites these approaches.