Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

Post by dudeinjapan » Sat, May 11, 2024, 8:12 PM UTC

spacetimeuser5 wrote: post #149

ein0p wrote: post #142

As important and impressive a result as this is, I am reminded of the cornerstone problem of neuroscience, which goes something like this: if we knew next to nothing about processors but could attach electrodes to the die, would we be able to figure out how processors execute programs and what those programs do, in detail, just from the measurements alone? And now scale that up several orders of magnitude and introdu…

>> The sample was immersed in preservatives and stained with heavy metals to make the cells easier to see. Try experimenting with immersing your brain in preservatives and staining with heavy metals to see how would you be able to write the comment similar to the above. No wonder that monkey methods continue to unveil monkey cognition.

Post by ganeshkrishnan » Sat, May 11, 2024, 8:15 PM UTC

tlarkworthy wrote: post #128

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a dumb question, because I doubt the distances between neurons makes a meaningful distance… But could a small brain, dense with neurons like a crow, possibly lead to a difference in things like response to stimuli or “compute” speed so to speak?

The electrical signals in brain are chemical reactions, not conductivity like a metal wire. They are slow! Synaptic junctions are a huge number of indirect chemical cascades, not a direct electrical connection, they are even slower! So brain morphology and connectome has a massive impact on what can be computed. Human twitch responses are done by cerebellum, not cerebrum. It's faster, but you can't do philosophy with…

Post by throw310822 » Sat, May 11, 2024, 8:31 PM UTC

causal wrote: post #147

throw310822 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can subscribe to Geoffrey Hinton's view that artificial neural networks are actually much more efficient than real ones- more or less the opposite of what we've believed for decades- that is that artificial neurons were just a poor model of the real thing. Quote: "Large language models are made from massive neural networks with vast numbers of connections. But they are tiny compared with the brain. “Our brains…

Hinton is way off IMO. Amount of examples needed to teach language to an LLM is many orders of magnitude more than humans require. Not to mention power consumption and inelasticity.

Post by twothreeone » Sat, May 11, 2024, 8:41 PM UTC

dudeinjapan wrote: post #152

ruined wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all the crows can tell i'm crazy, but i've never met an insane crow.

I dunno anyone who screams “Caw! CAW!”, raids garbage and poops in the street all day would probably be put in a mental institution. (Or just move to San Francisco.)

Post by steve_adams_86 » Sat, May 11, 2024, 9:06 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #129

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a dumb question, because I doubt the distances between neurons makes a meaningful distance… But could a small brain, dense with neurons like a crow, possibly lead to a difference in things like response to stimuli or “compute” speed so to speak?

And here I was wondering if there were heat issues in a crow brain.