Tabula Rasa and Human Nature

The neocortical microcircuit as a tabula rasa.

The neocortex has a high capacity for plasticity. To understand the full scope of this capacity, it is essential to know how neurons choose particular partners to form synaptic connections. By using multineuron whole-cell recordings and confocal microscopy we found that axons of layer V neocortical pyramidal neurons do not preferentially project toward the dendrites of particular neighboring py...

Spatial Cognition: A Tabula Rasa for the Sense of Direction

Two recent studies have shown that neurons which fire in a compass-like way--head direction cells--are present before rat pups open their eyes. Upon eye opening, the firing direction of these cells is anchored rapidly to visual landmarks.

Re-envisioning the Chinese Cityscape: Tabula Rasa and Palimpsest

In 1958, Mao Zedong famously compared China's 600 million people to a " blank sheet of paper free from any mark, " on which " the most beautiful words can be written " and the " most beautiful pictures can be painted. " 1 In his view, China's vast landscapes and its people's mindscapes were a tabula rasa awaiting transformation through his utopian blueprints. Since the Chinese Communist Party (...

Tabula Rasa: A Case Study in Evolutionary Curation

This paper describes a novel use of evolutionary techniques to curate a main stream art show, Tabula Rasa. This allowed an openended approach to curation that was entirely in keeping with the artistic motivations behind the project. We detail a major difficulty with this approach that will be faced by any future automatic curation systems.

Space and brain: a tabula rasa for the sense of direction