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Hiesinger Lab Grant Award: The Information Content of Brain Wiring

July 2, 2025

The information content of the brain, i.e. the size of a hard drive it would take for lossless up- anddownloading of information stored in biological neural networks of any size, is unknown. Bycontrast, the information content of artificial neural networks that underlie virtually allcontemporary artificial intelligence, is well defined and can be saved on a hard drive in a precisenumber…

On Neuromorphic Computing

July 2, 2025

There is an exciting, increasing interest of the neuromorphic computing community in the development of biological neural networks and The Self-Assembling Brain. Recent invited lectures include the International Conference for Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering (Aachen, 2024), and the International Workshop on Reliable and Systainable Neuromorphic Hardware (York, 2025), with production of a mindmap during the introductory keynote: Next opportunity to…

From the author’s lab: New research paper on self-organization of brain wiring in the journal Science

May 5, 2024

Axonal self-sorting without target guidance in Drosophila visual map formation Agi et al., 2024, Science. PMID: 38452066, DOI: 10.1126/science.adk3043 Abstract The idea of guidance toward a target is central to axon pathfinding and brain wiring in general. In this work, we show how several thousand axonal growth cones self-pattern without target-dependent guidance during neural superposition wiring in Drosophila. Ablation of…

The Self-Assembling Brain Audiobook is coming!

March 27, 2023

Since Princeton University Press has announced the release of the Paperback of The Self-Assembling Brain for Dec. 13, 2022, we are glad to announce that the audio rights have been licensed to Recorded Books! This is going to be interesting, especially for the 10 dialogues of our favorite geneticist, robotics engineer, Artificial Intelligence Researcher and Neuroscientist. We’ll post the release…

Paperback Release on Dec. 13, 2022

June 10, 2022

Princeton University Press will release the Paperback of The Self-Assembling Brain in December! Check out reviews in Science, TechTalks, on goodreads & amazon, …and a series of podcasts. How does a neural network become a brain? While developmental neurobiologists investigate how genes encode the growth of intricate connectivity as a basis for learning, computer scientists design artificial neural networks with…

100.000 views of the Royal Society Lecture

March 8, 2022

The June 2021 Lecture ‘The Self-Assembling Brain’ has now been watched more than 100.000 times on youtube, with 3.600 likes. Well, maybe not much in a world of internet celebrities, but remember, this is only a lecture on the brain and AI, with very little in the direction of self-help and zero pictures of cute cats… Thank you again to…

From Imprecision to Robustness in Neural Circuit Assembly: Research Unit awarded

December 20, 2021

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has founded a new research unit headed by Peter Robin Hiesinger that will examine the fundamental principles of brain development. The research unit includes thirteen principal investigators who are involved in nine closely linked research projects that explore how variability affects brain development despite identical genetic information. The researchers working in the nine projects within…

The Royal Institution Lecture

Royal Institution Lecture on Youtube – 68K views after 4 weeks!

July 31, 2021

The Royal Institution hosted a one and a half hour live lecture and discussion on The Self-Assembling Brain and the cross-talk of biological and artificial neural network research. Thanks to 800 participants for signing up, watching it live or over the next week via the Royal Institution video link. The lecture is online since July 2 on Youtube. Thanks for…