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Perspective ARTICLE

On the precarious path of reverse neuro-engineering

Shimon Marom^*, Ron Meir, Erez Braun, Asaf Gal, Einat Kermany and Danny Eytan

Network Biology Research Laboratories, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

In this perspective we provide an example for the limits of reverse engineering in neuroscience. We demonstrate that application of reverse engineering to the study of the design principle of a functional neuro-system with a known mechanism, may result in a perfectly valid but wrong induction of the system’s design principle. If in the very simple setup we bring here (static environment, primitive task and practically unlimited access to every piece of relevant information), it is difficult to induce a design principle, what are our chances of exposing biological design principles when more realistic conditions are examined? Implications to the way we do Biology are discussed.

Keywords:

reverse engineering, representation, neural network, robot, Braitenberg vehicle

Citation:

Marom S, Meir R, Braun E, Gal A, Kermany E and Eytan D (2009). On the precarious path of reverse neuro-engineering. Front. Comput. Neurosci. 3:5. doi: 10.3389/neuro. 10.005.2009

Received:

01 February 2009;

Paper pending published:

12 March 2009;

Accepted:

01 April 2009;

Published online:

04 May 2009.

Edited by:

Israel Nelken, Hebrew University, Israel

Reviewed by:

Ehud Ahissar, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Yasser Roudi, Nordita, Sweden

© 2009 Marom, Meir, Braun, Gal, Kermany and Eytan. This is an open access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.

*Correspondence:

Shimon Marom, Network Biology Laboratories, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel. e-mail: marom@technion.ac.il

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