The Unexpected Tech

Recognising Turing's influence on neuroscience

Alan Turing needs to be recognised not only in terms of computing but for the influence that his approach to cryptanalysis has had in neuroscience, argues Ray Dolan, the director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging and one of the top five most-cited neuroscientists in the world.

Speaking at the Turing Lecture at the Institute of Engineering and Technology, Dolan argued that just as cryptanalysis was critical for decoding the Enigma machine, used by the Germans in World War II, the brain decodes the state of the world. In doing so, it uses statistical procedures very much like those Turing and his colleagues used at Bletchley Park.