Rocca Mattia Della
Nuncius. 2017;32(2):376-411.
Neuromorphic technologies lie at the core of 21st century neuroscience, especially in the “big brain science” projects started in 2013 – i.e. the BRAIN Initiative and the Human Brain Project. While neuromorphism and the “reverse engineering” of the brain are often presented as a “methodological revolution” in the brain sciences, these concepts have a long history which is strongly interconnected with the developments in neuroscience and the related field of bioengineering since the end of World War II. In this paper I provide a short review of the first generation of “neuromorphic devices” created in the 1960s, by focusing on the work of Leon Harmon and his “neuromime,” whose material history overlapped in a very interesting sense with the visual and artistic culture of the second half of the 20th century.
神经形态技术是21世纪神经科学的核心，尤其是在2013年启动的“大科学脑计划”项目中，即美国的脑计划（BRAIN Initiative）和欧盟的人类脑计划（Human Brain Project）。虽然神经形态和大脑的“逆向工程”常被视为脑科学领域的“方法论革命”，但这些概念有着悠久的历史，自二战结束以来，它们与神经科学及相关生物工程领域的发展紧密相连。在本文中，我将简要回顾20世纪60年代第一代“神经形态装置”，重点介绍利昂·哈蒙的工作及其“神经拟态模型”，其物质历史与20世纪下半叶的视觉和艺术文化有着非常有趣的重叠。
