Credit: Salk Institute and Carnegie Mellon University
Salk and Carnegie Mellon researchers developed a new model for building efficient networks by studying the rate at which the brain prunes back some of its connections during development. In this model, nodes (such as neurons or sensors) make too many connections (left) before pruning back to connections that are most relevant (right). The team applied their synaptic pruning-based algorithm to air flight patterns and found it was able to create routes to allow passengers to reach their destinations efficiently.