131–140 of 208 posts
If this could be done for a human, I think there is a realistic prospect of perhaps being the first human "brought back to life inside a computer". Sure, the connectome isn't the whole story, but I think it possible that a few hundred years from now we might understand the brain sufficiently to simulate it, and then by inputting this connectome, together with guesses/approximations for the information not captured, t…
A big reason for my imminent-AGI Skepticism is the fact that our understanding of the currently existing, Biological intelligence is so, so shallow. We're here at "Systems level sketch of a fruit fly brain". It's incredible work! But as other comments detail, there is far more to the function of a fly brain than this "map". It's quite a long way from "Deep understanding of a Human Brain, to the point where we can beg…
If this could be done for a human, I think there is a realistic prospect of perhaps being the first human "brought back to life inside a computer". Sure, the connectome isn't the whole story, but I think it possible that a few hundred years from now we might understand the brain sufficiently to simulate it, and then by inputting this connectome, together with guesses/approximations for the information not captured, t…
With a connectome, you can make hundreds of copies of the data round the world. With pickled-brain-in-a-jar you better make sure that jar is well hidden in a dusty basement for long enough to not get chucked out, but not so well hidden future generations never find it.
Datahoarder question but can I download the map of the fly?
I think that releasing the map on torrent would be a useful idea as well. This fly could end up like the lobsters in Accelerando. In that book the mapped animal is lobsters and they get first mover advantage on some post-scarcity type things. Getting them to the Internet would be a good first step, IMO.
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Like everything in science: we don't know until we know. No need to treat research like a business.
You know you would have thought all the years and years of "donations" to "cancer research" there would be constant news stories about how we accidentally cured a bunch of ancillary medical problems, and wow its all free to everyone because it was from donations! Never heard a single story like this
"A Turning Point in Cancer Research: Sequencing the Human Genome" - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.3945817
Even without that I'm not sure why you think that's a good point — it's very easy to find serendipitous examples in medicine in general, e.g. viragra which was initially a heart treatment, or even thalidomide whose anti-cancer uses were suggested by the very birth defects that made it infamous.
Specifically cancer research finding other things by accident:
"Cancer researchers accidentally discover ‘cure’ for baldness, gray hair" - https://technology.inquirer.net/62453/cancer-researchers-acc...
"Cancer Researchers Accidentally Discover New Nylon Process" - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a8135/cancer...
It was my understanding that all this connectome-based research was largely a deadend, because it doesnt capture dynamics, nor a vast array of interactions. if you've ever seen neurones being grown (go search YT), you'll see it's a massive gelatinous structure which is highly plastic and highly dynamic. Even in the simplest brains (eg., of elgans), you get 10^x exponential growth in number of neurones and their conne…
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The method used seems like it would work as well on bigger brains. The amount of data may mean we have to wait for Moore's Law to keep improving things for a while though.
Moores law ended.
In this context, what matters is "how many operations can I get done for a dollar?", and that's still very much improving very fast, albeit not quite as fast as before.
A toy model compared to real neurons but a good starting place with nice results. We could identify the solution that most robustly reproduced the firing patterns even in the presence of noise.
I would be curious how well the connectome documents connection and dendrite/axon geometry, beyond connection paths. For shedding light on behavior related to connection strengths, timing, neuron firing sensitivities, etc. For the stable non-learning model as captured at scanning time.
To investigate adaptation purpose & behavior, it helps to understand what operational behavior has been learned.
Going to need a significant improvement in the software to get it to map a human. The fruit flu has 140,000 neurons and 54.5 million synapses and the AI that mapped it required a post process with humans checking it all with 3 million edits and they still have to identify every neuron type. A human brain has about 86 billion neurons and quite likely many trillions of synapses and that is likely an underestimate. That…
Cartographers have mapped Scotland. [random scribe muses that] The whole world could be next.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know you would have thought all the years and years of "donations" to "cancer research" there would be constant news stories about how we accidentally cured a bunch of ancillary medical problems, and wow its all free to everyone because it was from donations! Never heard a single story like this
Human Genome Project and everything derived from it. IIRC, that was originally proposed as a cancer research project: "A Turning Point in Cancer Research: Sequencing the Human Genome" - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.3945817 Even without that I'm not sure why you think that's a good point — it's very easy to find serendipitous examples in medicine in general, e.g. viragra which was initially a heart trea…