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Comment by chatwinra | Hacker News Reader

Why? That analogy is so widely recognised and accepted that electronic engineers/neuroscientists are experimenting on computer circuit boards to assess the understanding of neuroscience.

"It does so by way of neuroscience’s favourite analogy: comparing the brain to a computer. Like brains, computers process information by shuffling electricity around complicated circuits."

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2171497...

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Wires conduct signals unconditionally. Neurons may or may not transmit a signal depending on its complex network of inputs and internal state. A better technological analogy for neurons would be a signal processor.

Also, neurons interface using chemical messages in the form of many different neurotransmitters. The electrical phenomenon of cellular depolarization might as well be an implementation detail. If anything resembles a wire, it's the axon.

The article essentially says 'insects have very little computers in their heads'. To me at least, this doesn't meaningfully answer the question posed in the title. Furthermore, as per my comment, the BBC article characterizes neurons as 'wires', rather than the very sophisticated low-power processors they in fact are. Wetware implementing/running efficient algorithms honed by millions of years of evolution with (probably) trillions of test cases (all the insects that have ever lived).

[Edit: clarity]

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