The neuroconnectionist research programme

Understand

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) inspired by biology are beginning to be widely used to model behavioral and neural data, an approach we call neuroconnectionism.

• ANNs have been lauded as the current best models of information processing in the brain, but also criticized for failing to account for basic cognitive functions.
• We propose that arguing about the successes and failures of a restricted set of current ANNs is the wrong approach to assess the promise of neuroconnectionism.
• Instead, we take inspiration from the philosophy of science, and in particular from Lakatos, who showed that the core of scientific research programmes is often not directly falsifiable, but should be assessed by its capacity to generate novel insights.