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Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

nature.com

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Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#181

Post by bamboozled »

NexusMethod wrote: post #156

After reading through all comments as of 2024/05/11 I (as a professor at some major university) am quite surprised that not one single comment has asked the obvious question (instead of dishing out loads of (partial) "textbook knowledge" about brain functions, the difference between mammals and birds, AI and LLM etc.), which would be: what do all those strange structures and objects do which we know nothing about wha…

It's pretty awesome that all this complexity produces something beautiful like, a smile, or love.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#182

Post by tim333 »

dekhn wrote: post #87
tim333 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's actually "What you should do in order for us to make more rapid progress is to make the electron microscope 100 times better" and the state of art at the time was "it can only resolve about 10 angstroms" or I guess 1nm. So 100x better would be 0.1 angstrom / 0.01 nm. We have made some progress it seems. Googling I see "up to 0.05 nm" for transmission electron microscopes and "less than 0.1 nanometers" fo…

Resolution is only one aspect of EM that can be optimized.

It would be cool if they had a way of identifying which atoms are which.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#183

Post by ninashamsi »

I developed algorithms for a Neuroglancer fork which annotates unlabeled volumetric data via self-supervised learning. I am looking forward to more developments in large scale brain mapping projects :)

More project details: https://www.ll.mit.edu/sites/default/files/other/doc/2023-02...

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#184

Post by bluechar »

dmarble wrote: post #167
NexusMethod wrote: post #156

After reading through all comments as of 2024/05/11 I (as a professor at some major university) am quite surprised that not one single comment has asked the obvious question (instead of dishing out loads of (partial) "textbook knowledge" about brain functions, the difference between mammals and birds, AI and LLM etc.), which would be: what do all those strange structures and objects do which we know nothing about wha…

I'm in awe at the complexity and unknowability of it all, but I also have to chuckle at the thought that some portion may be vestigial. I'm particularly fond of the "Egg shaped object with no associated processes". :)

Tech debt in our own brains.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#185

Post by sdenton4 »

lostlogin wrote: post #144
sdenton4 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are an n=1 example, is my point. And there's no direct competition between bird brain architecture and mammalian brain architecture, so there's no reason for one architecture to 'win' over the other - they may both be interesting local maxima, which we have no ability to directly compare. Human brains might not be all that efficient; for example, if the competitive edge for primate brains is distinct enough, t…

> And there's no direct competition between bird brain architecture and mammalian brain architecture By and large It’s not direct competition but we are stamping our species at an alarming rate and birds are taking a hammering.

Are humans able to destroy all this habitat because they've got a better brain architecture, because they are able to achieve higher brain mass (because they don't need to fly to survive), or because they have opposable thumbs?

There's too many confounding factors to say that the human brain architecture is actually 'better' based on the outcomes of natural selection. And if we kill all the birds, we will lose the chance to find out as we develop techniques to better compare the trade-offs of the different architectures.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#186

Post by wg0 »

jamiek88 wrote: post #9
teuobk wrote: post #2

The interactive visualization is pretty great. Try zooming in on the slices and then scrolling up or down through the layers. Also try zooming in on the 3D model. Notice how hovering over any part of a neuron highlights all parts of that neuron: http://h01-dot-neuroglancer-demo.appspot.com/#!gs://h01-rele...

My god. That is stunning. To think that’s one single millimeter of our brain and look at all those connections. Now I understand why crows can be so smart walnut sized brain be damned. What an amazing thing brains are. Possibly the most complex things in the universe. Is it complex enough to understand itself though? Is that logically even possible?

And yet recall all the hype and claims around LLMs reaching AGI within few years.

LLMs that work at a very crude level of string tokens and emit probabilities.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#187

Post by tomcam »

dmarble wrote: post #167
NexusMethod wrote: post #156

After reading through all comments as of 2024/05/11 I (as a professor at some major university) am quite surprised that not one single comment has asked the obvious question (instead of dishing out loads of (partial) "textbook knowledge" about brain functions, the difference between mammals and birds, AI and LLM etc.), which would be: what do all those strange structures and objects do which we know nothing about wha…

I'm in awe at the complexity and unknowability of it all, but I also have to chuckle at the thought that some portion may be vestigial. I'm particularly fond of the "Egg shaped object with no associated processes". :)

Maybe it's vestigial. But when I was your age that's what they said about "Junk DNA", which turned out not to be junk.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#188

Post by [deleted] »

bluechar wrote: post #184
dmarble wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in awe at the complexity and unknowability of it all, but I also have to chuckle at the thought that some portion may be vestigial. I'm particularly fond of the "Egg shaped object with no associated processes". :)

Tech debt in our own brains.

[deleted]

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#189

Post by mr_toad »

cyberax wrote: post #120
Intralexical wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that kinda obvious? A baby that grows up in a sensory deprivation tank does not… develop, as most intelligent persons do.

> A baby that grows up in a sensory deprivation tank Now imagine a baby that uses an artificial lung and receives nutrients directly, moves on a wheeled car (no need for balance), does not have proprioception, or a sense of smell (avoiding some very legacy brain areas). I think, that such a baby still can achieve consciousness.

I doubt it really takes that much brain power to move around complex environments, even using legs. Insects manage to do it.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#190

Post by dredmorbius »

talsit wrote: post #6
eminence32 wrote: post #4

> cut the sample into around 5,000 slices — each just 34 nanometres thick — that could be imaged using electron microscopes. Does anyone have any insight into how this is done without damaging the sample?

Using a Microtome ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtome ).

NB: tome in Microtome has the same root as the T in CAT scan: computer aided tomography. Which is to say, slimly-sliced cabbage^W X-ray scans.

It's also the tome as in book, more properly one volume of a multi-volume (or multi-part) set, though it now generally simply means any large book.

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=tome>

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