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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

#41

Post by rmorey »

falcor84 wrote: post #27
gary17the wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[AI] "Frontier [supercomputer]: the storage capacity is reported to be up to 700 petabytes (PB)" (0.0007 ZB). [AI] "The installed base of global data storage capacity [is] expected to increase to around 16 zettabytes in 2025". Thus, even the largest supercomputer on Earth cannot store more than 4 percent of state of a single human brain. Even all the servers on the entire Internet could store state of only 9 human br…

I appreciate you're running the numbers to extrapolate this approach, but just wanted to note that this particular figure isn't an upper bound nor a longer bound for actually storing the "state of a single human brain". Assuming the intent would be to store the amount of information needed to essentially "upload" the mind onto a computer emulation, we might not yet have all the details we need in this kind of scannin…

we are nowhere near whole human brain volume EM. the next major milestone in the field is a whole mouse brain in the next 5-10 years, which is possible but ambitious

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#42

Post by itsthecourier »

throwup238 wrote: post #12

> The 3D map covers a volume of about one cubic millimetre, one-millionth of a whole brain, and contains roughly 57,000 cells and 150 million synapses — the connections between neurons. This is great and provides a hard data point for some napkin math on how big a neural network model would have to be to emulate the human brain. 150 million synapses / 57,000 neurons is an average of 2,632 synapses per neuron. The adu…

Artificial thinking doesn't require an artificial brain. As our own walking system, compared to our car's locomotion system.

The car's engine, transmission and wheels, require no muscles or nerves

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#43

Post by momojo »

blincoln wrote: post #35

Why did the researchers use ML models to do the reconstruction and risk getting completely incorrect, hallucinated results when reconstructing a 3D volume accurately using 2D slices is a well-researched field already?

Although the article mentions Artificial Intelligence, their paper[1] never actually mentions that term, and instead talks about their machine learning techniques. AFAIK, ML for things like cell-segmentation are a solved problem [2].

[1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.29.446289v4.... [2] https://www.ilastik.org/

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#44

Post by rmorey »

momojo wrote: post #43
blincoln wrote: post #35

Why did the researchers use ML models to do the reconstruction and risk getting completely incorrect, hallucinated results when reconstructing a 3D volume accurately using 2D slices is a well-researched field already?

Although the article mentions Artificial Intelligence, their paper[1] never actually mentions that term, and instead talks about their machine learning techniques. AFAIK, ML for things like cell-segmentation are a solved problem [2]. [1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.29.446289v4.... [2] https://www.ilastik.org/

There are extremely effective techniques, but it is not really solved. The current techniques still require human proofreading to correct errors. Only a fraction of this particular dataset is proofread.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#45

Post by falcor84 »

rmorey wrote: post #41
falcor84 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate you're running the numbers to extrapolate this approach, but just wanted to note that this particular figure isn't an upper bound nor a longer bound for actually storing the "state of a single human brain". Assuming the intent would be to store the amount of information needed to essentially "upload" the mind onto a computer emulation, we might not yet have all the details we need in this kind of scannin…

we are nowhere near whole human brain volume EM. the next major milestone in the field is a whole mouse brain in the next 5-10 years, which is possible but ambitious

What am I missing? Assuming exponential growth in capability, that actually sounds very on track. If we can get from 1 cubic millimeter to a whole mouse brain in 5-10 years, why should it take more than a few extra years to scale that to a human brain?

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#46

Post by layer8 »

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?

We don’t know what “understanding” means (we don’t have a workable definition of it), so your question cannot be answered.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#47

Post by layer8 »

blincoln wrote: post #35

Why did the researchers use ML models to do the reconstruction and risk getting completely incorrect, hallucinated results when reconstructing a 3D volume accurately using 2D slices is a well-researched field already?

Regarding the risk, as noted in the article, they are manually “proofreading” the construction.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#48

Post by dekhn »

g4zj wrote: post #10

Is there a name for the somewhat uncomfortable feeling caused by seeing something like this? I wish I could better describe it. I just somehow feel a bit strange being presented with microscopic images of brain matter. Is that normal?

When I did fetal pig dissection, nothing bothered me until I got to the brain. I dunno what it is, maybe all those folds or the brain juice it floats in, but I found it disconcerting.

Re: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped at nanoscale resolution

#49

Post by pfdietz »

nicklecompte wrote: post #14
jamiek88 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Crow/parrot brains are tiny but in terms of neuron count they are twice as dense as primate brains (including ours): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221... If someone did this experiment with a crow brain I imagine it would look “twice as complex” (whatever that might mean). 250 million years of evolution separates mammals from birds.

That shouldn't be too surprising, as a larger fraction of the volume of a brain should be taken up by "wiring" as the size of the brain expands.
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