News
Computer simulations of malfunctioning brains may be the key to understanding schizophrenia and other conditions. A research team including computer scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and a professor of psychiatry at Yale have been testing various theories of how schizophrenic brains misfire as they process information. People with schizophrenia often have trouble repeating different stories, for instance, frequently combining elements of separate stories and inserting themselves into the narrative.
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AUSTIN, Texas—After 20 years as director of the Dean’s Scholars Honors program in the College of Natural Sciences, computer scientist Alan Cline is stepping down. At the end of the semester he’ll be handing over the reins of the program to biologist David Hillis, the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor in Natural Sciences. Read More
In a bid to help understand the way that the human brain malfunctions to cause mental illness scientists have caused a computer system to lose its mind and claim responsibilty for a terrorist bombing. The team at the University of Texas and Yale University, including Professor Risto Miikkulainen and grad student Uli Grasemann, were looking to how the human brain is affected with schizophrenia by simulating a hypothesis that excessive dopamine in the brain can cause “exaggerated salience”, whereby the brain is learning from things it shouldn’t.
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The Department of Computer Science congratulates its graduating students of 2011. We wished them “Good Bytes and Good Luck” with a graduation celebration catered by Austin’s own Amy’s Ice Cream.
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AUSTIN, Texas—Computer networks that can’t forget fast enough can show symptoms of a kind of virtual schizophrenia, giving researchers further clues to the inner workings of schizophrenic brains, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Yale University have found.
The researchers used a virtual computer model, or “neural network,” to simulate the excessive release of dopamine in the brain. They found that the network recalled memories in a distinctly schizophrenic-like fashion. Read More
