INSPIRE: Investigating how Neurological Systems Process Information in Reality

How the brain stores and processes information remains a mystery, despite incredible discoveries and advancements in the field of neuroscience over the last century. The field of neuroscience has operated under the overarching idea that the brain processes information in a digital fashion based on firing rate of neurons. 

This concept has informed countless experiments, neurotechnology, and computational analysis of experimental data. 

However, evidence shows that digital-only models are insufficient to explain the brain’s computational power and complexity, and that neurological systems store information in other ways that could illuminate how the brain represents reality. 

The INSPIRE ARC Opportunity is soliciting ideas to explore the question: Are there new ways to explore and describe how functional neural systems store and process information that expand beyond the limits of digital representations?