Date: June 27, 2015

"Descartes thought that the brain was a kind of hydraulic pump, propelling the spirits of the nervous system through the body."

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)

Date: June 27, 2015

"Freud compared the brain to a steam engine."

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)

Date: June 27, 2015

"The neuroscientist Karl Pribram likened it to a holographic storage device."

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)

Date: June 27, 2015

"Many neuroscientists today would add to this list of failed comparisons the idea that the brain is a computer -- just another analogy without a lot of substance."

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)

Date: June 27, 2015

"Often, when scientists resist the idea of the brain as a computer, they have a particular target in mind, which you might call the serial, stored-program machine."

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)

Date: June 27, 2015

"If the brain is not a serial algorithm-crunching machine, though, what is it?"

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)

Date: June 27, 2015

"Although my colleagues and I don't literally think that the brain is a field programmable gate array, our suggestion is that the brain might similarly consist of highly orchestrated sets of fundamental building blocks, such as "computational primitives" for constructing sequences, retrieving inf...

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)

Date: June 27, 2015

"If neurons are akin to computer hardware, and behaviors are akin to the actions that a computer performs, computation is likely to be the glue that binds the two."

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)

Date: June 27, 2015

"If the heart is a biological pump, and the nose is a biological filter, the brain is a biological computer, a machine for processing information in lawful, systematic ways."

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)

Date: June 27, 2015

"The sooner we can figure out what kind of computer the brain is, the better."

— Marcus, Gary (b. 1970)