Newton Howard


Newton Howard is a brain and cognitive scientist, the former Director of the MIT Mind Machine Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Functional Neurosurgery at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Oxford Computational Neuroscience Laboratory. He is also the Director of MIT's Synthetic Intelligence Lab, the founder of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies and the Chairman of the Brain Sciences Foundation. Professor Howard is also a Senior Fellow at the John Radcliffe Hospital at Oxford, a Senior Scientist at INSERM in Paris and a P.A.H. at the CHU Hospital in Martinique.
His research areas include Cognition, Memory, Trauma, Machine Learning, Comprehensive Brain Modeling, Natural Language Processing, Nanotech, Medical Devices and Artificial Intelligence.

Education and career

Howard earned his B.A. from Concordia University and an M.A. in Technology from Eastern Michigan University. He went on to study at MIT and at the University of Oxford where, as a graduate member of the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, he proposed the Theory of Intention Awareness. He also received a Doctorate in Cognitive Informatics and Mathematics from the University of Paris-Sorbonne, where he was also awarded a Habilitation a Diriger des Recherches for his work on the Physics of Cognition.
Howard is an author and national security advisor to several U.S. Government organizations and his work has contributed to more than 30 U.S. patents and In 2009, he founded the Brain Sciences Foundation, a nonprofit 5013 organization with the goal of improving the quality of life for those suffering from neurological disorders.

Research

Howard is known for his Theory of Intention Awareness, which provides a possible model for explaining volition in human intelligence, recursively throughout all layers of biological organization. He next developed the Mood State Indicator a machine learning system capable of predicting emotional states by modeling the mental processes involved in human speech and writing. The Language Axiological Input/Output system was built upon this MSI framework and found to be capable of detecting both sentiment and cognitive states by parsing sentences into words, then processing each through time orientation, contextual-prediction and subsequent modules, before computing each word's contextual and grammatical function with a Mind Default Axiology. The key significance of LXIO was its ability to incorporate conscious thought and bodily expression into a uniform code schema.
In 2012,. Howard published the Fundamental Code Unit theory, which uses unitary mathematics to correlate networks of neurophysiological processes to higher order function. In 2013, he proposed the Brain Code theory, a methodology for using the FCU to map entire circuits of neurological activity to behavior and response, effectively decoding the language of the brain.
In 2014, he hypothesized a functional endogenous optical network within the brain, mediated by neuropsin. This self-regulating cycle of photon-mediated events in the neocortex involves sequential interactions among 3 mitochondrial sources of endogenously-generated photons during periods of increased neural spiking activity: near-UV photons, a free radical reaction byproduct; blue photons emitted by NADH upon absorption of near-UV photons; and green photons generated by NADH oxidases, upon NADH-generated blue photon absorption. The bistable nature of this nanoscale quantum process provides evidence that an on/off coding system exists at the most fundamental level of brain operation.

Selected works

Books