They talked about the physiological basis of memory and of pattern recognition.

他们还讨论了记忆和模式识别的生理基础。

Young wrote:51 Dear Turing, I have been thinking more about your abstractions and hope that I grasp what you want of them. Although I know so little about it I should not despair of the matching process doing the trick.

杨写信说：亲爱的图灵：我一直在考虑你的想法，希望我能理解你要做的东西。虽然我在这方面不是很懂，但我认为，匹配过程是有可能存在捷径的。

You have certainly missed a point if you suppose that to name a bus it must first be matched with everything from tea-pots to clouds.

你说当大脑要识别一辆巴士时，它需要遍历从茶壶到云彩的所有东西，逐个进行匹配，那么你忽略了一点，大脑一定通过另外某种过程，

The brain surely has ways of shortening this process by the process—I take it—you call abstracting. Our weakness is that we have so little idea of the clues and code it uses.

对这种匹配进行了简化——这里按我理解——就是你说的抽象化。问题是，我们对大脑的运作机制所知甚少，

My whole thesis is that the variety of objects etc. are recognised by use of comparison with a relatively limited number of models.

我的观点是，大脑在识别大量不同的事物时，是通过与相对有限的模型进行匹配的。

No doubt the process is a serial one, perhaps a filtering out of recognised features at each stage and then feeding back the rest through the system.

该过程无疑是分阶段依次进行的，也许是在每个阶段，对某些特征进行过滤，然后把余下的特征继续输入系统。

This probably does not make much sense in exact terms and the only evidence for it is that people do group their reactions around relatively simple models—circle, god, father, machine, state, etc.

这在具体形式中可能不太好理解，唯一的证据是，人们会用相对简单的模型，对自己的反应进行分类——圆、上帝、父亲、机器、状态，等等。

Can we get anywhere by determining the storage capacity given by 1010 neurons if arranged in various ways and assuming facilitation of pathways by use?

如果我们考虑神经元的各种可能的组织形式，并假设其路径是最简的，能否确定1010个神经元所支持的存储容量？

Is there any finite number of sorts of arrangement that they could have?

它们的组织形式是不是有限的？

For example, each with 100 possible outputs to others arranged a) at random through the whole or b) with decreasing frequency with distance.

比如说，每个神经元会向随机的，或者就近的神经元，输出100种可能的信号。

Given any particular plan of feedback can one compare the storage capacity of these plans, assuming say a given increase of probability of re-use of a pathway with each time of use?

我们能否假设，一条路径每次被使用时，其复用概率会有一个特定的增长，然后对各种组织形式的存储容量进行比较？

This is all very vague. If you have any ideas about the next important sorts of question to ask do let me know. Would it be a great help if we could give some sort of specification of the destinations of the output (within the cortex) of each cell? I feel we ought to be able to disentangle the pattern somehow. Yours, John Young.

这一切都非常让人迷糊。如果你有其它的想法，请告诉我。如果我们能对皮层细胞的输出终点给出某种说明，是否会有很大帮助？我觉得我们应该通过某种方法，解开这个模式。

你的朋友约翰·杨