The Brain Computing Machine

The author, a medical doctor, employs electrical engineering terminology to show how the brain may be likened to a digital computing machine consisting of ten billion relays called neurons. To carry the analogy further, the performance of the brain is governed by inverse feedback, subsidiary networks secure invariants, or ideas, predictive filters enable us to move toward the place where the object will be when we get there, and complicated servo-mechanisms enable us to act with facility and precision. Disorders of function are explained in terms of damage to the structure, improper voltage of the relays, and parasitic oscillations.