Novelty Detector
Wired
Issue 4.02 | Feb 1996
The hippocampus – a tiny, seahorse-shaped organ in the brain – filters and classifies incoming information and sends it to other parts of the brain to be stored. And as Mark Gluck, a psychologist and computer scientist at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, believes, the organ’s special talent is novelty detection. It notices anything new or different – with amazing speed and sensitivity. Gluck’s software, modeled on the hippocampus, has now been underwritten by the US Navy to help detect cracks and worn gears in helicopter engines before the wear and tear cause a fatal crash. The software has already confirmed a significant problem in one batch of rebuilt engines. Gluck also hopes that his software will be used in heart and brain monitoring, alerting nurses to possible seizures and heart attacks. Gluck’s homepage: http://www.cmbn.rutgers.edu/cmbn/faculty/gluck.html.