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Map of an Insect’s Brain

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#81

Post by epgui »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #78
epgui wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a biochemist and I think you're under-estimating how sophisticated fruit fly behaviour studies are.

What do you actually work on? I'm a synthetic biologist and know a hell of a lot about manipulating pieces of DNA. I know a bit about other branches of lab and academic biology. And I can remember some of the chemistry classes I've taken, usually a bit after the fact. Are you saying this because you've spent time reading and/or researching fruit fly behavior studies? Or for some other reason?

I currently work as a software/data engineer, but spent 12 years doing fundamental biochem & life science. My MSc was on the characterization of extracellular vesicles in the context of horizontal transfer of information in ccRCC (kidney cancer) cell lines.

I worked closely with one prof (not my PI) who specializes in the study of mitochondrial metabolism in fruit flies, but fruit flies are not my area of expertise. I know just enough to know that there’s an enormous amount of literature on the subject.

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#82

Post by tsimionescu »

cyberax wrote: post #74
Groxx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some more context / concrete links: there are ongoing efforts to simulate the C. elegans worm, e.g. https://openworm.org/ , which has ~300 neurons. The actual precision of this model is: nobody knows, because nobody knows precisely what neurons do / what they react to. We know some of it but definitely not all. But, simulating what we do know, you get quite worm-like behavior, despite whatever flaws exist. To get…

OpenWorm is a bad model. To give a computer analogy, you're simulating highly optimized low-level code for Apple ][. That uses all the little hardware-specific tricks and timings to work. A fruit fly brain is a better model to simulate in this regard. It's much more "generic", so there's a hope that we can recapture high-level behavior from it more easily.

> A fruit fly brain is a better model to simulate in this regard. It's much more "generic", so there's a hope that we can recapture high-level behavior from it more easily.

This is a completely baseless assumption. It is also moot, since simulating even 300 neurons is beyond our current computational power; simulating 3000 is not going to be possible in the foreseeable future.

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#84

Post by james-bcn »

lossolo wrote: post #54
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #6

if you map every single neuron, at what point is it no longer just a 'model' of reality, and is reality. How do we know that the computer model of neurons does not have the same internal awareness as the real neurons?

> if you map every single neuron, at what point is it no longer just a 'model' of reality, and is reality If you map position of every fish in the sea will you have a model of a living sea with living fish and all their interactions (electrical/physics/chemical etc)? Or just the positions of fish in a sea at certain point of time?

Similarly: if you model a black hole in enough detail, do you have an actual black hole? If you model a storm in enough detail, is it wet?

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#85

Post by [deleted] »

epgui wrote: post #81
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you actually work on? I'm a synthetic biologist and know a hell of a lot about manipulating pieces of DNA. I know a bit about other branches of lab and academic biology. And I can remember some of the chemistry classes I've taken, usually a bit after the fact. Are you saying this because you've spent time reading and/or researching fruit fly behavior studies? Or for some other reason?

I currently work as a software/data engineer, but spent 12 years doing fundamental biochem & life science. My MSc was on the characterization of extracellular vesicles in the context of horizontal transfer of information in ccRCC (kidney cancer) cell lines. I worked closely with one prof (not my PI) who specializes in the study of mitochondrial metabolism in fruit flies, but fruit flies are not my area of expertise.…

[deleted]

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#86

Post by pfoof »

mkmk wrote: post #62
ralusek wrote: post #45

His name is Timothy Mosca and he works with fruit flies... Mosca means fly, the insect, in Spanish.

Nominative determinism! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

A large digression:

"In 2015 researchers Limb, Limb, Limb and Limb published a paper on their study into the effect of surnames on medical specialisation"

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#87

Post by jokethrowaway »

jll29 wrote: post #39
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 righ…

I wish we would work on bio hardware which closely resemble the brain.

I don't care if it's running on silicon or on some brain like tissue, I just care I can 3d print and train human-like thinking assistants.

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#89

Post by FrustratedMonky »

wizofaus wrote: post #25
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #6

if you map every single neuron, at what point is it no longer just a 'model' of reality, and is reality. How do we know that the computer model of neurons does not have the same internal awareness as the real neurons?

Is there convincing evidence actual insects have "awareness"?

There isn't convincing evidence that humans have 'awareness'.

Re: Map of an Insect’s Brain

#90

Post by FrustratedMonky »

james-bcn wrote: post #84
lossolo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you map every single neuron, at what point is it no longer just a 'model' of reality, and is reality If you map position of every fish in the sea will you have a model of a living sea with living fish and all their interactions (electrical/physics/chemical etc)? Or just the positions of fish in a sea at certain point of time?

Similarly: if you model a black hole in enough detail, do you have an actual black hole? If you model a storm in enough detail, is it wet?

I think with all of these examples the difference is if it executes. A computer model can be encoded and put on a loop and execute. So what is difference between biology where neurons are firing based on electrical potential of calcium atoms, versus in a computer loop processing math, both fire. So does the computer model while executing have an internal subjective experience, the same as a human with its electrical signals firing. Where in the brains is our own awareness, and if its just the 'firing' of neurons, then the computer that is a model of that firing can have same awareness. You can't come up with any argument that computers don't have awareness that doesn't also exclude humans. It is arguable that human awareness is just a byproduct of our processing.
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