In this article we discuss the influence of William James and Charles Darwin on the thoughts of Santiago Ramón y Cajal concerning the structure, plasticity, and evolution of the nervous system at the cellular level. Here we develop Cajal's notion that neuronal theory is a necessary condition to explain the plasticity of neural connections. Although the roots of the term "plasticity" in referenc...

The influence of crack root radius and plastic material properties on the tip fields was evaluated by strain gradient plasticity theory, classical theory. A conventional mechanism-based (CMSG) theory used in study. stress single edge tension specimen are investigated numerically for a wide range variations. Five values curvature ρ = 0 (mathematical notch); 25 nm, 30 60 nm 100 were investigated....

A part of the theory of dislocations in crystals is revised with the aim to fit it into the framework of the nonlinear theory of plasticity initially designed for amorphous glassy materials. Dislocations provide a microscopic mechanism explaining the plasticity of crystals. The idea of dislocations suggested by Taylor and Orowan in 1934 is illustrated on the first two figures. Fig. 1.1 and Fig....

General results from statistical learning theory suggest to understand not only brain computations, but also brain plasticity as probabilistic inference. But a model for that has been missing. We propose that inherently stochastic features of synaptic plasticity and spine motility enable cortical networks of neurons to carry out probabilistic inference by sampling from a posterior distribution ...