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I am not sure if the brain is totally analogous to a computer but it certainly behaves like one in some respects. It seems to take input information from the environment, process that signal, store some information, send signals out to produce effects in the environment etc.

If we continue this hardware analogy, thinking about how human made computers work they do not function until they have been programmed to behave in a certain way, by writing code which defines their behaviour.

Obviously no one has written code that defines how humans behave but there are common routines that occur.

A simple example when we stand up there is a routine which is activated by the sudden loss of blood pressure which the brain responds to by causing the heart rate to increase, the heart to beat faster and other effects which restore the blood pressure. This happens basically every time except in disease states.

I understand this on a "hardware" level, there are baroreceptors in the aorta and carotid sinus that sense the drop in pressure and signal back to the solitary nucleus which somehow effects the changes mentioned above. But returning to the computer analogy above, if we simply connect a sensor and an effector to a computer nothing actually happens until it is programmed to behave in the way you expect.

Does the brain have something analogous to software in this way? How is that information stored? How is information like that transmitted through the genetic code?

Brian Ó Maoláin
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  • Are you familiar with artificial neural networks on computers? They work in a simplified but similar way to the central nervous system. These are used for both language and image generation, for which free playgrounds such as TextSynth and GauGAN exist. – Michael Feb 15 '22 at 11:15
  • I think that question is adjacent to mine for sure, but maybe not the same. They are asking if the brain resembles a classic Von Neumann architecture style computer (the answer being no) whereas I'm asking whether there is an analogue to the concept of software in the brain. I have read a little bit about ANNs but these still have some underlying software design, no? otherwise how do they "know" what they are supposed to do with their inputs? – Brian Ó Maoláin Feb 15 '22 at 12:59
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    Broad question, it would take several books to answer it, but I'd suggest this book as a good starting point. – David Cian Feb 15 '22 at 13:02
  • ANNs are structured in a way that is suitable to the type of processing needed. But they still have to be trained, where the training result is stored as synaptic weights. Similarly, the brain comes pre-configured by genetics for certain types of processing; and much of it too must be trained, hence the critical periods and general lack of skill in babies. The details are presumably complex, as with cell migration and differentiation in general; plus neurons have potentially long protrusions that somehow know where to go. – Michael Feb 15 '22 at 14:22
  • I've closed this as a duplicate of our reference question on brain/computer comparisons. I agree yours isn't quite identical, but I think what remains is a very opinion-based question about whether you could make any analogy of "software" with what the brain does; I think it doesn't make much sense since the hardware is so different, but someone else could argue differently. – Bryan Krause Feb 15 '22 at 14:52

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