Notes on Learning to Compute and Computing to Learn

One key message in modern neuroscience is multimodality: the ability of uni-modal areas in the brain such as speech and vision to interact with each other and with hetero-modal areas, areas that are activated by two or more input modalities, to converge the outputs of the uni-modal systems for producing ‘higher cognitive’ behaviour. Such behaviour includes the ability to quantify, the ability to retrieve images when linguistic cues are provided and vice versa. Multi-net neural computing systems that can simulate such behaviour are reported. Multi-net systems comprise of modules that take unimodal input and one or more modules that facilitate cross-modal interaction through Hebbian connections. These systems have achieved a modicum of success.