Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
Hessam Akhlaghpour describes how organisms may have evolved universal computation using RNA sequences and secondary structures.
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/199
Patreon (full episodes and Discord community: patreon.com/braininspired
Apple podcasts: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/brain-inspired/id1428880766?mt=2
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2UZj8c8Ap5oc2gh2rJxLLe
The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists.
Read more about our partnership: thetransmitter.org/partners
Sign up for the “Brain Inspired” email alerts to be notified every time a new “Brain Inspired” episode is released: thetransmitter.org/newsletters
To explore more neuroscience news and perspectives, visit thetransmitter.org.
Hessam Akhlaghpour is a postdoctoral researcher at Rockefeller University in the Maimon lab. In that capacity, he studies the neuroscience of decision making and cognition in fruit flies. However, his interests took a different turn, or an additional turn, after being inspired by Randy Gallistel and Adam King's book Memory and the Computational Brain. Randy has been on the podcast before to discuss his ideas that memory needs to be stored in something more stable than the synapses between neurons, and how that something could be genetic material like RNA. When Hessam read this book, as you'll hear him describe, he was re-inspired to think of the brain the way he used to think of it before experimental neuroscience challenged his views. It re-inspired him to think of the brain as a computational system. But it also led to what we discuss today, the idea that RNA has the capacity for universal computation, and Hessam's development of how that might happen. So we discuss that background and story, why universal computation has been discovered in organisms yet since surely evolution has stumbled upon it, and how RNA might and combinatory logic could implement universal computation in nature.
0:00 - Intro
4:44 - Hessam's background
11:50 - Randy Gallistel's book
14:43 - Information in the brain
17:51 - Hessam's turn to universal computation
35:30 - AI and universal computation
40:09 - Universal computation to solve intelligence
44:22 - Connecting sub and super molecular
50:10 - Junk DNA
56:42 - Genetic material for coding
1:06:37 - RNA and combinatory logic
1:35:14 - Outlook
1:42:11 - Reflecting on the molecular world
Hessam Akhlaghpour describes how organisms may have evolved universal computation using RNA sequences and secondary structures.
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/199
Patreon (full episodes and Discord community: patreon.com/braininspired
Apple podcasts: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/brain-inspired/id1428880766?mt=2
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2UZj8c8Ap5oc2gh2rJxLLe
The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists.
Read more about our partnership: thetransmitter.org/partners
Sign up for the “Brain Inspired” email alerts to be notified every time a new “Brain Inspired” episode is released: thetransmitter.org/newsletters
To explore more neuroscience news and perspectives, visit thetransmitter.org.
Hessam Akhlaghpour is a postdoctoral researcher at Rockefeller University in the Maimon lab. In that capacity, he studies the neuroscience of decision making and cognition in fruit flies. However, his interests took a different turn, or an additional turn, after being inspired by Randy Gallistel and Adam King's book Memory and the Computational Brain. Randy has been on the podcast before to discuss his ideas that memory needs to be stored in something more stable than the synapses between neurons, and how that something could be genetic material like RNA. When Hessam read this book, as you'll hear him describe, he was re-inspired to think of the brain the way he used to think of it before experimental neuroscience challenged his views. It re-inspired him to think of the brain as a computational system. But it also led to what we discuss today, the idea that RNA has the capacity for universal computation, and Hessam's development of how that might happen. So we discuss that background and story, why universal computation has been discovered in organisms yet since surely evolution has stumbled upon it, and how RNA might and combinatory logic could implement universal computation in nature.
0:00 - Intro
4:44 - Hessam's background
11:50 - Randy Gallistel's book
14:43 - Information in the brain
17:51 - Hessam's turn to universal computation
35:30 - AI and universal computation
40:09 - Universal computation to solve intelligence
44:22 - Connecting sub and super molecular
50:10 - Junk DNA
56:42 - Genetic material for coding
1:06:37 - RNA and combinatory logic
1:35:14 - Outlook
1:42:11 - Reflecting on the molecular world
