What We Are Reading Today: The Self-Assembling Brain

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Updated 17 January 2023
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What We Are Reading Today: The Self-Assembling Brain

Author: Peter Robin Hiesinger

How does a neural network become a brain? While neurobiologists investigate how nature accomplishes this feat, computer scientists interested in artificial intelligence strive to achieve this through technology.

“The Self-Assembling Brain” tells the stories of both fields, exploring the historical and modern approaches taken by the scientists pursuing answers to the quandary: what information is necessary to make an intelligent neural network?

As Peter Robin Hiesinger argues, “the information problem” underlies both fields, motivating the questions driving forward the frontiers of research.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘What We Inherit’

Updated 04 February 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘What We Inherit’

Over the past decade, the field of human genetics has produced an extraordinary range of discoveries—including the refinement of polygenic scores, which use a person’s DNA to estimate their likelihood of developing a trait or disease.

But are these new technologies ready to leave the research lab and be deployed in schools, fertility clinics, and the wider world? “In What We Inherit,” Sam Trejo and Daphne Martschenko offer different perspectives on the societal impact of the rapidly unfolding DNA revolution.