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Map of an Insect’s Brain

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#31

Post by xyproto »

yyyk wrote: post #22
falcor84 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lastly, we don't have the computational ability just yet to simulate even the mapping itself. Could you please explain why not? 548,000 synapses sounds entirely feasible to me.

Neurons and synapses are incredibly complex. Think you're emulating over 3,000 heterogeneous cores with over half a million links while communication must be low-latency-ish. A third of the links seem to join other links and we don't even know what that does. If there's computation there we'll need even more cores.

It could be simulated slowly at first.

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#33

Post by seesawtron »

gptgpp wrote: post #16
abraxas wrote: post #5

Is it simulated to the level where you could give it some visual stimulus and observe the actions it is trying to take? Could it be wired to a remote robotic insect and control it in real time? I've no idea how detailed these simulation projects and if we are months or decades away from doing what I mentioned

Man... I just find neural connectomes so depressing. It's like looking at the copper wiring on the motherboard, or the pins of the CPU, when what you really want is the logic from the networked gates (transistors). Yet it seems we are many, many decades away from being able to extract that in any comprehensible or definitive way. I need to stop reading neuroscience articles. There's always big proclamations, Like "th…

You should read about the immense criticism this paper attracted after its publication. It was published on the same journal since publishers like a bit of controversy ;) [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08966...

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#35

Post by scarmig »

> But the study revealed that a third of the connections in the fruit fly’s brain did not follow this pattern—they were between two axons, between two dendrites or from a dendrite to an axon.

Interesting. Does this extend to humans? Does it offer a plausible biological mechanism for backprop?

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#36

Post by DonHopkins »

jokoon wrote: post #28

I wish AI scientists would try to work on this instead of machine learning.

In Jaron Lanier's review of John Markoff's book "What the Dormouse Said", he mentioned an exchange between Douglass Engelbart and Marvin Minsky:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110312232514/https://www.ameri...

>Engelbart once told me a story that illustrates the conflict succinctly. He met Marvin Minsky — one of the founders of the field of AI — and Minsky told him how the AI lab would create intelligent machines. Engelbart replied, "You're going to do all that for the machines? What are you going to do for the people?" This conflict between machine- and human-centered design continues to this day.

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#37

Post by inportb »

GordonS wrote: post #3

> The connectome of the larval fly, published Friday in the journal Science, took 12 years to complete. Imaging a single neuron required about a day... > Human brains have an estimated 86 billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synapses... So, the techniques used for the fly are totally impractical for humans, or presumably any mammal. Anyone know of any developments that may help? Maybe AI could be used to auto…

More like totally impractical for living specimens that you want to continue living meaningfully.

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#38

Post by hprotagonist »

gptgpp wrote: post #16
abraxas wrote: post #5

Is it simulated to the level where you could give it some visual stimulus and observe the actions it is trying to take? Could it be wired to a remote robotic insect and control it in real time? I've no idea how detailed these simulation projects and if we are months or decades away from doing what I mentioned

Man... I just find neural connectomes so depressing. It's like looking at the copper wiring on the motherboard, or the pins of the CPU, when what you really want is the logic from the networked gates (transistors). Yet it seems we are many, many decades away from being able to extract that in any comprehensible or definitive way. I need to stop reading neuroscience articles. There's always big proclamations, Like "th…

> It's like looking at the copper wiring on the motherboard, or the pins of the CPU, when what you really want is the logic from the networked gates (transistors).

and what you kind of really want is a debugging guide to an OS.

hah hah it is to laugh.

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#39

Post by jll29 »

jokoon wrote: post #28

I wish AI scientists would try to work on this instead of machine learning.

Machine learning has much more humble goals: fitting a bunch of data to a curve.

Despite all the hype around chatGPT, I have yet to see any model that asks me a question (without being programmed to do so). Today, my son asked me out of the blue: "Why do people write on paper?" and "What are our walls made of?" and "Why don't we paint our house yellow?". I don't care to live extraordinarily long, but I'd give my right arm to have a quick peek into the future just to see how much of the brain's underlying mysteries will be decoded in, say, 100 or 1,000 years.

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#40

Post by moffkalast »

abraxas wrote: post #5

Is it simulated to the level where you could give it some visual stimulus and observe the actions it is trying to take? Could it be wired to a remote robotic insect and control it in real time? I've no idea how detailed these simulation projects and if we are months or decades away from doing what I mentioned

Not sure if they're at that stage yet, but it's definitely possible and been done before for the elegans worm https://github.com/topics/c-elegans

They even got a web sim working by now it looks like https://heyseth.github.io/worm-sim/

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