Slashdot Mirror
Mouse Brain Simulated Via Computer
Mordok-DestroyerOfWo writes "Researchers from the IBM Almaden research lab and the University of Nevada have created a simulation of half a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer. 'Half a real mouse brain is thought to have about eight million neurons each one of which can have up to 8,000 synapses, or connections, with other nerve fibres. Modelling such a system, the trio wrote, puts "tremendous constraints on computation, communication and memory capacity of any computing platform."' Although there's more to creating a mind than setting up the infrastructure, does this mean that we may see a system for human mental storage within our lifetimes?"
Researchers ran in terror of a big cat. News at 11.
We don't use it any more, 'cause the computer keeps running away and hiding under the desk.
Unlikely, given that we are really no where close to even understanding completely everything about our complex brains.
Do we even want to, wouldn't that take away some of the mystery behind humans. Afterall if we can figure ourselves out then doesn't that mean that we aren't really all that complex?
wouldn't that also give us perfect explanations of people's actions making situations predictable violating free will?
afterall if society is ultimately chaotic in terms of our understanding, then wouldn't this be the ultimate control?
The first thing this half-brain thought: "First post!"
Penrose said unique thought and intellegence requires cosmic rays firing random neurons. Without this you have a deterministic machine, and not a brain.
Let me get this straight - millions of R & D monies and we have a 'simulated' mouse brain to show for it.
I can simulate a mouse brain on a whiteboard, with only two colors of markers, leaving 1/2 the white space. Can I get funds for that...?
Assuming that the virtual mouse brain runs on Linux, I propose that we start work now on a virtual mouse trap.... The only question whether we need to develop a virtual spring, or virtual glue.
Three Squirrels
NARF $
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
I opened my mouse and there was just a single chip in there. Why use BlueGene to simulate half of that?
Is it true that each of those neural connections is not binary but can have a range of connectivity?
The average Slashdotter's brain has been stimulated via computer for years. Isn't that the whole point of Internet porn?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
With the continual, exponential increases in computing power that we are getting, in about 25-30 years we should have the capacity to simulate human brains. And yes, this does have a lot of consequences for how a lot of people view themselves... but already we know that we don't have free will (we make decisions before we are aware of them, for example), and we already have lots of support for reductionist viewpoints. Simulations are just an extension of that.
If you want more solid arguments for this, read The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil. He makes a convincing argument.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I wonder if/how they modeled the ability of the brain to grow annd develop, form new connections over time?
and
How can it be half a mouse brain if it has 1/1000 the number of a real half mouse brain? Their simulated neurons also had less synapses than the real thing. So is the 8000 a typo, or am I missing something?
Oh no... it's the future.
I thought the University of Nevada would never get even half a brain. Good for them I guess.
What did the author mean by that? If they are not simulating any of the actual neural structures in the mouse brain, does it mean they are just simulating a more or less random neural network with eight million neurons? I have seen reports of simulations of actual brain structures in more primitive animals years ago.
Until they can, as they say, "add structures seen in real mouse brains" there's nothing to see here, move along...
There is no connection between the simulation and human mental storage. None at all. Why the nonsensical statement in the article!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I always thought it was fascinating how nature has been able to "grow" super computers (our closest analog to brains) and we have been unable to build anything even close to emulating their capabilities. Perhaps, there is a limitation to a mind's ability to understand how itself works. I think that if a person were to have absolute knowledge of how his or her own mind worked, it may just drive that person to madness when he or she realizes the mechanics of it reduce his or her thoughts and actions to meaninglessness (that is, thought may just be a huge if/then/else process, completely mathematically predictable).
It's very clever and subtle, you see the mouse brains are really simulating us.
In Soviet Russia, computer operates mouse !!
If they can simulate half a mouse's brain, then they can surely simulate a politicians. Now we can start rounding up those scum and replacing them with computers ...
I wank in the shower.
This is GREAT !! Finally I can "off-load" all those old sit-com theme songs, latent memories from crappy college classes, and useless images from the evening news. Thus making free space for "potentially important" new crap while still having the old crap available in some neuro-implant. Hell - I'd be happy if they could just run something like GParted on my noggin and wipe the "Bushisms" and the Bush-Years ... what relief that would bring.
..." Warren Zevon - RIP
"The land of the brave and the home of the free - where the less you know the better off you'll be
Its not the years, its the mileage
Now they finally have a place to put Walt Disney's brain. Imagine if they hooked him up to Maya, the kind of glorious animated movies he would churn out.
Did it think "Cheese!" .. or was that the other half of the brain?
- Martin
For more information on the Blue Brain Project which appears to be the same, or atleast a strikingly similar project but from switzerland, click...err, that link I just placed! Here also is a good article to learn more about blue brain. It seems much more detailed than the BBC's snippit.
Groups of neurons started becoming attuned to one another until they were firing in rhythm. "It happened entirely on its own," says Markram. "Spontaneously." Insights like these are absolutly amazing. It's all such facinating research, but I can help feel a twinge of sorrow for the poor thing. the main purpose of the artificial brain, say its creators, is to make new types of experiments possible. For example, what happens when damage is inflicted on certain types of cells whose function still isn't determined? How many cells can be switched off until the behavior of the surviving cells around them becomes erratic, or the entire circuit breaks down? The poor thing is just circuits and reactions, I know, but I feel sorry that it's literally being torn apart and rebuilt all the time. It's odd, I don't feel this way in similar experiments with real mice; I guess I have a soft spot for computers...
Demented But Determined.
This isn't really anything dramatic. It appears to only differ from what they were already doing with Blue Gene I think a year ago in that now they've made some optimizations to their firing/communication algorithms to be less resource intensive (and correspond less directly to what occurs physically), allowing for simulation of more neurons and firings.
:) But at this point I think that is more a question for philosophers and linguists than for serious AI researchers if that is what you are getting at.
They don't seem to be simulating any neuroanatomy beyond interconnected neurons, and the initial interconnection pattern is just artificially generated.
So while this is cool, and their resources are very impressive, this is no way warrants the article title "Mouse Brain Simulated Via Computer".
But the submitter also asks about this implying a coming "system for human mental storage." I think we've all seen that ST:TNG episode too
"What are we going to do today, BlueGene?" ...
"Try to take over the world!"
It's cool that we can create the basic scale of the infrastructure of a (half) mouse brain - but if we're really going to simulate a brain, we need the ability to read the contents of a real one in order to verify our simulation. Otherwise, we have little basis for saying that input X gives the sensation of movement, and would have effect/output Y in terms of changed state/response.
I wonder what the current state of neuron state reading is - would we ever theoretically be able to read the state of a brain beyond the external outputs? Could we ever get a sinlgle state that would be the 'ROM' of a person's memories and mental state, that you could place in a simulation and have that person's memories 'wake up' in a simulation? I wonder how close we could get.
Ryan Fenton
Unfortunately, there is no current way to model a real brain. The connections are too complex and numerous to even begin to do so. Among individuals the connections also differ significantly, which makes a consensus model even harder. We might be able someday certain to mimic certain structures, as a research in California is trying to mimic the hippocampus using circuitboards. The hippocampus is one of the major targets affected by Alzheimer's disease, so replacing it with a circuit would be one potential way to alleviate memory loss from the disease. It is a huge task still, but apparently he has had success. Probably the most difficult part will to be to copy an individual's connections (essentially copying their memory), as everything differs from person to person (nobody has the same memory).
does that mean a single mouse brain can simulate two super computers?
Developing simulations involves using abstractions and simplifications to deal with the fact that we can't handle the computational complexity of quantum-level simulation of an entire mouse brain.
I've seen far too many papers where people make a "simulator" for a system, without demonstrating that the simulator has any real connection to reality, and then make grandiose claims about the real system that they're simulating, based on simulation results.
Call me a cranky old computer scientist, but someone simulating a brain isn't particularly noteworthy. Showing that the simulator is accurate enough to shed light on the ways that brains work, or that the simulated mouse brain can achieve things that we have difficulty achieving with traditional computer software, and I'll be excited.
Down here in the Slow Zone, half a mouse brain is about all we can expect.
We've almost reached the limit of silicon transistors. None of the new technologies on the horizon are particularly promising: optical computers still rely on silicon parts and have been going nowhere for years; quantum computers still struggle with decoherence with only a handful of qubits and no one knows how to program them anyway; and as for nano-scale diamond rod logic? Maybe when someone comes up with a universal assembler (not likely).
Of course I'm optimistic about computing technology in general, but with breakthroughs like this my optimism is getting a little strained. Someone prove me wrong here.
Mouse, whatever... Wake me up when computer scientists can model an insect brain!
Artificial stupid to compete against actual stupid? We will win OR tie if the A.I. wants to simulate itself...
(Seriously, this is good stuff; especially if they are deeply simulating neurons, in my state we can only do a few hundred down with crazy details like ion flow simulation.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
However, there is an alternate theory of consciousness, based on quantum physics. It is inherently non-deterministic and cannot be modeled in a computer.
Hence, IBM's big assumption may be wrong. However, at least, the IBM experiment will tell us whether the operation of the brain is strictly Newtonian. If this artifical brain behaves differently from a mouse brain, then we would know that non-Newtonian physics is crucial to the operation of a flesh-and-blood brain.
I would imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these, but I want to be able to sleep tonight...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
For the last ten years, you've really been electing a bunch of PET 3032s, Apple Is and ZX-80s. The speech synthesis was by Superior Software and the suits by US Gold. Sometime in the next few months, we are due to be attacked by a large number of mutant camels, the road system already having degenerated into a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Do you mean it's a single-button mouse they are simulating?
Oh, and this simulated mouse story is pretty interesting too.
They were afraid that if they had simulated a whole mouse, the boys at Apple would steal it.
Remember the future...
They could do the whole brain if they would just run a dual core processor.
What?
Very good point, but I think you have it half-wrong. Because we can't exhaustively compare their model vs. reality, we can't consider the Newtonian assumption fully validated by experiment. But a disagreement between the model and reality certainly disproves at least one of:
Did you expect better? The model is half a brain.
However, there is an alternate theory of consciousness, based on quantum physics [quantumconsciousness.org]. It is inherently non-deterministic and cannot be modeled in a computer.
I think the biggest argument against this is that synapses do not work on the atomic level. They are made of atoms, but quantum states do not seem to overtly affect organic matter at cellular level.
Of course I could be wrong about this, but since decisions are usually the next best move it could simply be a matter of weighting what the "intelligence" applies to his rules as next best move.
The problem with General Artificial Intelligence is that "the next best move" is often open ended and too many possible choices often give our current computation a run for its money unless its put into some form of predefined rules.
The reason humans do so well is because we have certain criteria encouraging us to do things (hunger, pain, altruism, fear, etc etc)
Hence, our general intelligence goals aren't that complex (usually... to feel good about oneself and one's life) and that our true intelligence is being able to recognize things that improve upon that given a set amount of rules we know.
Which makes us very deterministic.
Even rebelling against the crowd can often be very predictable in humans.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
... what about a quantum computer?
-1 not first post
- Simulated only half a mouse brain
- Ran at about 1/10 the speed of a real mouse brain
- Only ran for 10 seconds
- Only simulated generic tissue (didn't contain brain structures found in real mice)
From the article: Imposing such structures and getting the simulation to do useful work might be a much more difficult task than simply setting up the plumbing.For future tests the team aims to speed up the simulation, make it more neurobiologically faithful, add structures seen in real mouse brains and make the responses of neurons and synapses more detailed.
It's not that this isn't noteworthy, it's that mammalian brains are incredibly complex. I would be curious to see if they could faithfully reproduce a fish or reptile brain at this point.
Quantum physics *can* be simulated in a computer. It's just that it can requires time exponential in the number of particles (in the worst case). The output is the probability of each possible outcome, which is actually *better* than reality which "outputs" just one outcome without telling you how probable it was.
I for one welcome our new supercomputing mice overlords.
I am not an expert. If I am misled in something, please correct me.
What would we do if we did simulate a human brain and it became self-aware? Would turning off the computer be murder? Would it be a form of life? Would it have a soul? The philosophical implications of this would be staggering. The day that this eventually happens will be an interesting day indeed.
In linux, we have a whole glue language.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Surely it would have made sense to try to simulate a less intelegent life form first, like perhaps a dolphin or a human.
... we disected a mouse brain, and there, in little tiny letters, was:
What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9?
But the teacher just muttered something about base 13, and told us to ignore it.
(sig) The last bug isn't fixed until the last user is dead. (/sig)
Noone has ever proved (or gave very strong reasons for) the necessity of quantum-level simulations of brains, so I'd say your post is at least a bit misleading...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
... who looked for photos of this machine before actually looking at what it did?
-1 not first post
Ahhh....but there is continuing work being done with quantum computing. Combine old style computing with Quantum computing and.....
to paraphrase Jack Nicholson in "The Departed": "You all are [on your way out]. Act accordingly."
Advances in nanotech will obsolete the human brain and body probably within fifty years. So if you're younger than forty, you'll probably see it. If you're between forty and sixty, you might or might not depending on how close you are to the upper end of the range and whether you can take advantage of life extension technologies over the next twenty years or so. If you're over sixty - arrange for a suspension contract with a cryonics firm.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Fair point. Although my main intention was to show the the (necessary) use of abstractions when modeling potentially introduces modeling errors. I wasn't really trying to say that a quantum-level simulation would be the gold standard of accuracy.
This story (and all others like it) ignore the GIGO effect. We still don't know what constitutes a neurotransmitter and how they work. WTF are they simulating?!? And if that's not enough, it's been established that the supporting glial cells also participate in inter-neuronal communication, and, there's far more of those in a mouse brain than neurons. If you omit these from the simulation, you get garbage.
How is it that slashdot'ers can't smell vaporware when "cool science" is involved.
Once again, it's complete crap!
DISMANTLE THE MOON ALREADY
I'd like the idea that I'm deterministic -- find the right inputs and I'd rule the world. Back to the Lab, Pinky.
Maybe that mean we could be become someday "immortal" by transferring our entire mind into a machine. If this machine is capable of self conscience and can replicate all of the human brain, it may be possible to make it emulate the function of an otherwise dead people.
Penrose is an excellent mathematician, but he's a crackpot when it comes to biology and the brain.
As for brain simulations, they almost always use randomness in the form of pseudo-random number generators. Physical random number generators are actually available and could be used, but nobody bothers because there is no conceivable way in which that could make a difference.
Without cheese what is there to live for?
The mouse would obviously commit suicide in that case. So, the program is correct.
The funny thing I find is you could refactor your mouse algorithm into a "human male" simply by replacing "smell cheese" with "see hot woman" and "east cheese" with....
You made a number of spurious statements to support your thesis that IBM made a big assumption:
It is possible that brain activity occurs via the microtubules, but this has not been well shown.
Quantum physics is not *efficient* to simulate on modern computers, as the non-deterministic aspects tend to drive the model exponential. This does not prevent extremely large deterministic computers from modelling inefficiently, nor does it prevent prevent Quantum Computers from modelling more quickly (kudos to other reply who posted this point faster).
That theory of consciousness is not a particularly scientific theory. I say this since the fundamental thesis appears to be that there is 'something about consciousness' that prevents it from being possible to be simulated on a computer, as opposed to a more specific thesis. Care seems to have been taken to avoid testable claims, like the ability to solve particular classes of problem on a computer, or the ablility for a computer to pass some sort of Turing test. The heavy reliance on a slippery definition of 'consciousness' is critical. Lastly the main authors are not supporting their cases by publishing papers in decent journals, but instead by selling books and videos.
Even Penrose (of string theory fame), attempting the Lucasian argument in An Emperor's New Mind, resorted to choosing 'a mathematicians' ability to, in principle, prove any true theorem.' as the most viable testable aspect of consciousness. Since a computer will always (because of Godel's incompleteness) have statements that it cannot prove, Penrose argued that a mathematician must thus be more than any computer could be. The supposition that a mathematician's ability to freely choose between formal systems gives it the ability to prove anything is a bit of an eye popper for me, even with Penrose's 'in principle' tacked on.
Penrose followed the rebuttal well: In the same way that any computer is existing within a formal system, and thus is unable to prove certain theorems (Godel's), humans exist in physical reality - which is simulable (yes, including quantum physics) by either a large or quantum computer, given all the physics known to science at this time. This means that anything subject to known physical laws can prove no more than whatever some astronomical ultra-computer capable of simulating that subject, could prove.
The result of this painful train of thought, for Penrose, was the supposition that there must be some fundamental new physics, operating within the brain, that enables us to have the potential to solve any mathematical problem for which a solution is out there. Penrose hopes that this physics is lingering near the microtubules, but he is totally clear that it is not normal Quantum Physics, since that doesn't escape computer simulable activity.
I am not bringing up Penrose as a Straw-man - I feel he did the best job of analyzing and supporting the position. In particular, I am not saying 'blah - just Penrose et. al. not understanding what the scientific method is' In fact Penrose is well aware of the scientific method, and classifies definitions of science along a strong-weak path with strong-definitions requiring that theories be thoroughly disproven to be considered scientific. He considers his own views - namely that a scientific theory should be disprovable 'in principle', to be a weaker than normal definition.
Penrose's knowledge of computation and physics, and the quality of his arguments, far surpass the other writers in this area. He is the only fair target. Besides, his webpages have never used the blink tag. Penrose is cited on the parent's link, but it is hard to criticise the position of that linked author without having bought their video or book.
That said, I obviously disagree with his position, and that of the parent. In particular, obviously, none of this series of experiments at IBM can or will shed
For more info: http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?cat
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm pretty all we'd know (if it behaves differently) is that there is some sort of difference between the operation of the simulated and real versions. We wouldn't necessarily know that, out of all possible flaws in the simulation, that the non-Newtonian difference in construction is the one responsible for the difference in behavior.
Well, talk about big assumptions... I did two semesters in quantum physics as part of my electronics engineering degree. There I learned a bit about this "quantum" stuff that so many people throw around so easily.
The first thing that must be understood is that quantum effects appear in *very* small dimensions only. Quantum computing experiments must be performed under extreme conditions, a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero, just to get a quantum entanglement of a few bits for a perceptible amount of time. There's no way one could obtain quantum effects beyond normal chemical reactions in a human cell.
Roger Penrose, who started this "quantum consciousness" theory is a mathematician, not a physicist. He did it probably as a response to the evolving research on neural networks, such as the one mentioned in this article, based on a philosophycal uneasiness about the idea of us having a deterministic brain. He has been debunked by quantum physicists many times since he published his book.
Yet, he needs not worry. We can have a brain that's fully deterministic at a microscopic level without doing away with free will, if we assume that our brains operate in non-linear conditions.
Besides, it's not as if we had to reproduce exactly the working of living beings to emulate them. Airplanes are able to fly higher and faster than any bird without flapping their wings. At this time, we are like aircraft engineers were in the 1890s. Perhaps we will be able to find better mechanisms than used in natural brains for processing thoughts.
Later that very same day, the lead-researcher's cheese sandwiches disappeared mysteriously....
Memory is stored non-locally, as an interference pattern, in many ways similar to a hologram on a plate. There is absolutely NO way 'stimulating' a mouse brain in this way is going to achieve memory storage or retrieval. The best scientists can do within the reductionist mindset ( which these guys most certainly are working in ) is to monitor the physical reactions to stimuli. This is qualitatively a world away from anything useful, and memory storage in particular. I'm sure it gets them further funding, but they're not going to achieve anything.
Slashdotters are disappointing me on this one. I practically fell out of my chair when I read that half a mouse cortex has been simulated. This is an INCREDIBLE advancement. Furthermore, the fact that synchronous firing (which is probably THE most important feature of neuronal activations in the cortex) was observed is absolutely remarkable. First of all, the human brain is not a quantum computer. The scales as WAY to large, and this has been known for many years . Only crackpot websites have suggested otherwise. There is absolutely NO serious research on quantum computation in the brain. That theory was discarded several years back by serious researchers. Secondly, there are consistent theory of the mind. In particular, Jeff Hawkins Memory-Prediction framework. It is becoming increasingly evident that the mind is simply an extremely powerful predictor, which evolved to protect organisms. And third, recent research has linked synchonous firing to CONSCIOUS attention. Which means that this simulated half a rat brain is most likely the first conscious simulation EVER. This is HUGE. I cannot believe, on a forum such as this, that people would be making jokes that imply that absolutely nothing has been accomplished. This is practically the beginning of the next stage of human evolution. I could say more, but I'll let slashdotters redeem themsevles.
If our brains were so simple we could understand them, we'd be so simple we couldn't.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
These people are simulating approximately 10^7 neurons. The last estimate that I know of for granule cells of the human cerebellum alone was 10^11. That means that simulating a human brain requires at least 10^4 more neurons. So, this may be interesting, but it is still a good ways from stimulating a human brain.
our many, many years of research in Ca+ dynamics in voltage-gated calcium channels that are involved in synaptic transmission, gene expression and dendritic integration since IBM has part of the mouse brain simulated. I guess trying to simulate using the laws of chemistry and physics to validate our experimental results are meaningless since we concentrated on such a small, tiny-teenee system of a small neuron compared to a whole mouse brain. Good for you IBM. *hangs up lab-coat*
Setting up computational infrastructure is an important but extremely unexciting step in neural simulation. The very fundamentals of *what* we should be simulating are still largely unknown. If anyone has read more on the research please correct me, but my guess is they are running simulating 8 million undifferentiated neurons disconnected from real-world input. This isn't a "mouse brain", they just call it such because the number of "neurons" is similar.
Read closer - mouse cortex was not simulated. A wad of neurons with the same number of cells and connections as half a mouse brain was simulated. It had no topology and was not computing anything. That's not a significant achievement in cognitive science. It's putting decades old neural network really big and simulating it really fast. Nobody said that couldn't be done. It just takes some elbow grease.
An achievement would be to understand and simulate the network topology of half a mouse brain. or heck even just one of the visual, auditory, motor or olfactory systems. but they didn't do that either.
I practically fell out of my chair when I read that half a mouse cortex has been simulated. This is an INCREDIBLE advancement.
Reading the article, the half a mouse cortex was simply based on number of neurons simulated, not right-left brain functionality. Presumably doubling the size of the computer would model the entire mouse brain, but it's only IBM, they couldn't do that.
In addition, everything I have seen in tech press on AI since the rules based AI reasoning failures of the 80's has been neural net simulations looking for patterns, such as the mentioned synchronized firings. Aren't the neural net rules just tweaked until they get interesting behavior like that? Don't tell me you think they actually have any idea how they would simulate brain functionality. Training neural nets is just something easy to do. Beats actually writing complex code, doesn't it?
I've never seen any explanation for how either short term or long term memory works, much less reasoning or any other functionality. And that at least is something that would seem able to be modelled and explained. How does man know anything about something they have never encountered before, for example, to acquire language as a child?
It's a catch-22. AI researchers are setting up neural net models and hoping they produce something that explains that which they cannot explain to model.
rd
My mouse only has one (must have been in some sort of accident...), but damn, it's huge! And heavy, too. Damn thing must have a steel center!
'Because we can't exhaustively compare their model vs. reality, we can't consider the Newtonian assumption fully validated by experiment.'
And for mostly the same reasons that we can't exhaustively compare their model vs reality, we can't consider the Newtonian assumption fully invalided by this experiment either. The biggest problem should be obvious, this brain hasn't been raised from birth to adulthood in the body and experiences of a mouse.
Everything we believe about brains tells us that they are no more or less than learning machines. They are attached to our bodies and the parts therein so they quickly begin interacting with those parts. Soon they discover patterns between those interactions and correlations, finding that control of some parts results in corresponding input in sense data. This mouse has no body, no senses, and even if it did, they wouldn't be the body and senses of a mouth. It doesn't have the same physical needs and impulses a mouse does. It doesn't have the same biochemical interactions resulting from diet.
This brain simulation should create a learning system similar to a neural net but there is no reason to believe that simulation will share anything with a mouse beyond raw capacities (even those will be diminished since it is only half a brain).
Even small scale simulations of the brain, based upon the not so biologically plausible model of a neural network produce Interesting Results. It is likely that a much smaller scale model of the rat brain, when fully understood, would produce intelligent results as well.
Like the guy that discovered the double helix.
:p
Seemed to work for him - he won a nobel prize.
Ofcourse, they could all end up believing THEY are the mouse and hiding under desks for the rest of their lives.
On the up side, they would have succeeded in the simulation.
On the down side, we'd still be no closer to understanding how the mouse brain works and possibly have delayed this understanding by a few years.
I guess it could go either way or neither.
Cant hurt to try
that microtubules exhibited quantum behavior. There may be no evidence but its fascinating to apply the concept of shrodingers cat to interacting neurons.
perhaps certain parts of the brain are in superpositions until we 'observe' them.
it offers enticing explanations for attention and consciousness vs subconscious.
What?! No Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy references? Slashdot is going to the dogs.
FTA:
and
So they're also 7.992 million neurons and an additional 1700 synapses per a neuron short and that's only to get to half of the whole thing.
Regardless that's a huge neural network they got going. I remember putting together a simple neural network for a handwritten digit recognizer. The thing worked...eventually, but occasionally got things wrong (confused 4s and 7s) and needed some additional processing prior to feeding it the actual data. Keep in mind, this was just to recognize digits and this was after various training on the network (anywhere from a thousand samples to ten-thousand samples). I didn't conduct any reasonable experiments on the network but I did notice that I hit a wall in terms of accuracy no matter how much I trained the network. I guess I could've tried setting up the network differently or adding additional nodes to account for things like centering the image, resizing the image so it's roughly the same size, etc but either way I was hand-crafting the network and doing this by trial and error. If those guys can get any insight on how to better construct these things that'd provide some big advancements to understanding how brains work and are constructed to do useful processing.
A massively parallel cortical simulator with (a) phenomenological spiking neuron models; (b) spike-timing dependent plasticity; and (c) axonal delays.
(see the actual research description here: http://www.modha.org/papers/rj10404.pdf)
Secondly, it is not necessary for a cortex to have left-right brain functionality in order for it to function. This has been demonstrated in live humans.
And third, the speed, relative to real-time, is irrelevant. It is comparatively a minor task to increase the speed of the simulation by increasing parallelization.
Now, to respond to your somewhat antiquated understanding of the current state of AI:
In addition, everything I have seen in tech press on AI since the rules based AI reasoning failures of the 80's has been neural net simulations looking for patterns, such as the mentioned synchronized firings.
Sounds like you're a couple of years behind (as would be expected on slashdot, which primarily focuses on IT and science, and not neuroscience). Let me bring you up to date a little. Spiking neural networks began to grow in popularity in the mid to late 90's. They are much more biologically realistic then most of the models used in the 80's and early 90's. Also, a lot of research has been done which points to the significance of chaotic attractors, which arising from phase-locked loops in the neuronal structure. The fact that synchronous firing is observed tends to imply similar dynamics are occurring.
Furthermore, you make the assumption that biological brains are somehow superior to simulated brains, just because they are more chemically complex. That assumption has absolutely no research to back it up. For all we know at this point all of that chemical complexity may be superfluous for evolutionary benefits (and this is direction which evidence suggests).
Aren't the neural net rules just tweaked until they get interesting behavior like that?
That's the way it used to be done, so I can understand your confusion here. I think the problem lies in the fact that people are very interested in neuroscience these days. But a remarkable amount of progress has been made. Phenomenological spiking neural networks are quite a bit biologically accurate than the "neural nets" of the 80's and early 90's.
Don't tell me you think they actually have any idea how they would simulate brain functionality.
The cortex is arranged into mircocolumns of neurons, which have a very definite structure repeating structure over the surface of the cortex. Jeff Hawkins has recently presented a very convincing argument for structure of the mind, in relation to the structure of the cortex.
Training neural nets is just something easy to do. Beats actually writing complex code, doesn't it?
If you're implying that the simulation was not complex, consider that each neuron had its own dedicated computer. And, once again, this is much more complicated than a simple neural network.
I've never seen any explanation for how either short term or long term memory works, much less reasoning or any other functionality. And that at least is something that would seem able to be modeled and explained. How does man know anything about something they have never encountered before, for example, to acquire language as a child?
Explanations for both short and long term memory have been out there for quite some time. But neuroscience is not a popular topic of discussion, partly because it can get quite complex. People would much rather be talking about the step in the evolution of Intel processors, or life
An achievement would be to understand and simulate the network topology of half a mouse brain. or heck even just one of the visual, auditory, motor or olfactory systems.
They did much more than simulate a single part, they simulated half of an entire mouse brain. The individual cortices are almost completely identical in structure.
This is a remarkable achievement, not just because of the research, but because of the fact that large companies are starting to take notice. Certainly the model can be improved significantly, but not if people don't start taking notice. This and quantum computing are practically the only hopes for the survival of the human species (and quantum computing is much more of a longshot). By disregarding this research, and practically mocking it, slashdotters are basically waving goodbye to the only REAL chance humanity has.
Airplanes are able to fly higher and faster than any bird without flapping their wings
While it is true that we have been able to reach much higher upper bounds, the key is efficiency. Take a model plane for example, those can only run for a few minutes whereas geese and other flying animals have been able to go for hours (or perhaps days) without a "refuel". I understand that part of this is fuel storage but it seems like the winged propulsion using muscles is very efficient. There are probably gliders that can do very similar feats, but those weigh a fraction of a similar sized goose
The same applies to Neuroscience. For example, a cockroach has very few neurons, I've forgotten how many but I remember reading somewhere that the average computer in 2002 had more processing power than one. Yet we don't see little man-made bugs scurrying around.
One correction, I said:
...consider that each neuron had its own dedicated computer.I was thinking about an eariler simluation done by IBM that was only simulating a single microcolumn. In this case, there are 4096 processors each simlulating 4096 somewhat biologically accurate spiking neurons. The structure is also a fairly accurate reconstruction of the cortex including microcolumns.
"does this mean that we may see a system for human mental storage within our lifetimes?"
/. icon become a reality within the next 20 years.
I don't know that we may see this, but we will definitely see Bill Gates'
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Does Hawkins memory-prediction framework account for symbolizing capacity? Does he (or you) have a useful def of consciousness in this context?
Make Demonade.
You're confusing consciousness with intelligence. A tree search (like in chess) is artificial intelligence, and can beat grandmasters if the computer is fast enough. Or say you solved P == NP. Now you'd have a very respectable general artificial intelligence indeed (tell it what you want and it'll tell you what to do to get there), but it's not necessarily conscious.
(Unless, that is, "consciousness" is just another God of the Gaps, but the cogito seems to show otherwise, at least for the person doing the thinking.)
on a computer designed for mice to provide the question.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
I'm more worried about the war against the machines...
Sounds like a new project: "distributed mouse brain"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I haven't RTFA. I don't know enough to understand whether or not the various things posted by the parent are true. I have no more classical science education than a couple years as a non-major in college. Quantum mechanics doesn't make sense to me and string theory might as well be trying to explain snarks for all I grasp of it. I could examine a mouse brain and the most interesting information I could probably add would be how it tastes. Still I feel incited to venture an opinion. Obviously, I am not new here.
I find the phrase "slashdotters are basically waving goodbye to the only REAL chance humanity has" to be particularly poor taste. There has always been something poised to wipe out the world as we know it. Its pretty much a near universal religious principle. That doesn't make it any less true, but to espouse that the particular idea you've put your faith in is the only hope, well that is... actually pretty much what I believe too, but at least I call it a religious belief straight out instead of trying to pretend it's science.
For adding information key to a better understanding of what was going on: +5 pts.
Now where is the slashdot eraser... what? You're kidding right?For mangling good science with poor logic and blind faith: -100pts.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
The symbolizing capacity of the brain has never been measured directly, only inferred. In short, the answer is, basically, yes. Hawkins explains the immense symbolizing capacity by talking about a hierarchy in space and time, created by layers of microcolumns. Read Hawkins book "On Intelligence" for an in depth, biologically plausible, explaination.
It's kind of hard to accurately simulate something you don't fully understand. It's kind of like creating a simulated "god" that can create a universe and seeing whether or not the results match up to the real thing, as a method of validating intelligent design.
A better alternative would be to extract the entire nervous system and inputs (eyes, ears, etc...) from a mouse and suspend it in a test tube environment similar to what was seen in RoboCop 2, then create synthetic read-only linkages to every neuron in the brain and building up some sort of relational database of neuron-to-neuron activity, relative to various forms of sensory input and a baseline "idle" state, and extracting patterns from it.
Once you can isolate the predictable pattern sets, then you can attempt non-biological simulations. Then, it's just a matter of running the same sensory information through the simulation and the real thing to see if they react similarly.
As far as crazy ideas like "storing the human mind" on a computer... probably not likely to happen. The human mind rarely remembers any event exactly the same way each time and very likely uses a highly variable mix of compression and psychological interpretation to extract the data back into short term (conscious) memory.
8==8 Bones 8==8
How is simulating a brain, any brain, going to improve the chances of human survival?
How about using our own brains for something more constructive?
How about solving the social problems that we have?
How about solving societal problems that we have?
How about recycling everything on a global scale?
How about using energy sources that are non-polluting?
How about stopping non-necessary traffic around the world?
How about stopping the manufacture of weapons?
How about using the knowledge that we already have in improving the quality of life for all? (Not just the people of industrialized nations)
We as human race have had the knowledge and means for at least 20 years to feed all people. Yet there are still children dying of hunger around the world. While at the same time there is a growing problem of obesity.
My opinion is that human race as an entity is long overdue some evolution.
Human beings as individuals can be intelligent. I have yet to see that same intelligent behaviour in human race as a whole. Even as nations we are not intelligent often enough.
Maybe if climate change kicks us strong enough in our collective reproductive organs we get the hint.
Equal legal rights for virtual brains and meat minds?
So will their halfbrained simulated computer come up with funny answers for a rhetorical question asked in every episode?
Sounds like they're not only doing the network density of neurons, but actually modeling the active states to some degree. Which is good because from what I understand of previous attempts is that AI researchers failed to take into account the analog nature and multiple waveform patterns used in neuron communication in an organic brain. Hopefully something will be learned in simulating a range of values between 0 and 1 as well as using waveforms as temporary data carriers in their model.
It's a matter of intelligence. Humans are not intelligent enough to solve some of the problems we are now faced with. And, as our problems become increasingly complex, there will be an increasing number of unsolved problems.
How about using our own brains for something more constructive?It's a nice thought. However, as you have pointed out, it will require radical social changes, that won't occur until we solve some of our many unsolved problems.
How about solving the social problems that we have? How about solving societal problems that we have?People have been saying this for decades, and the situation has gotten worse, and not better. Social problems have very deep roots in our society. They go all the way back to the very structure of society itself, which was very carefully planned and exists in a very delicate balance. However, even with all of that careful planning that balance is bound to becomed unbalanced eventually, unless we are actively correcting the new problems that arise as population increases and new techonologies are developed.
Artificial brains can be of enormous practicality to society. They can be designed to lend a hand to workers, at the lowest incomes which, if we are really honest with ourselves, have replaced what used to be the slaves of society. THAT is where your "social problems" are coming from. Every time humanity designs a new tool to help lowest income workers, everybody in society reaps the benefits. We're reaching the limit of how much a tool can help, without needing some kind of intelligence.
How about recycling everything on a global scale? How about using energy sources that are non-polluting? How about stopping non-necessary traffic around the world? How about stopping the manufacture of weapons? How about using the knowledge that we already have in improving the quality of life for all?All of that is great, and people have been trying to do these things for decades. However, these things are not going to solve our deeper social problems, whereas, AI does have that ability.
It's a matter of intelligence. Humans are not intelligent enough to solve some of the problems we are now faced with. And, as our problems become increasingly complex, there will be an increasing number of unsolved problems.
Granted. This is a valid point. And I agree in that AI is a valid research goal. Just not at the expense of other more important research.
How about using our own brains for something more constructive?
It's a nice thought. However, as you have pointed out, it will require radical social changes, that won't occur until we solve some of our many unsolved problems.
Then why not make those radical changes? Why keep doing what we have been doing for who knows how long? Is the almighty AI, which is still not even close to reality, going to magically solve all our problems? How about simulating what changes need to be made in human society in order to make it work? Why not work on the unsolved problems themselves and not some pie in the sky problem that has been researched for about 40 years now with limited successes.
How about solving the social problems that we have? How about solving societal problems that we have?
People have been saying this for decades, and the situation has gotten worse, and not better. Social problems have very deep roots in our society. They go all the way back to the very structure of society itself, which was very carefully planned and exists in a very delicate balance. However, even with all of that careful planning that balance is bound to becomed unbalanced eventually, unless we are actively correcting the new problems that arise as population increases and new techonologies are developed.
Maybe the problem is that not enough resources have been allocated for this research. Or have you really seen any real research in to how social problems can be fixed? I have, but they are very few and far in between. And their practical applications are even fewer.
Just look at the US budget for example. By some estimates 51% of it is used for war and its consequences. In essence creating more trouble.
What if just 10% of that money was spent trying to fix social problems. Eliminating the need for young people to use drugs for example.
I know that it will not happen soon because there are huge vested interests working against it.
Artificial brains can be of enormous practicality to society. They can be designed to lend a hand to workers, at the lowest incomes which, if we are really honest with ourselves, have replaced what used to be the slaves of society. THAT is where your "social problems" are coming from. Every time humanity designs a new tool to help lowest income workers, everybody in society reaps the benefits. We're reaching the limit of how much a tool can help, without needing some kind of intelligence.
Lets be real here. If a corporation had an artificial brain to do the job of a researcher with negligible cost which would you they would choose?
Then there would be even more unemployed people. We have reached a point where the question has changed from can we use technology to solve our problems to should we solve our problems with technology. I believe that some of our problems have non-technological solutions.
To answer your slave issue: I agree with you completely in that low income workers have replaced slaves in modern society.
Now lets take this scenario further. The wage slaves are replaced with automatic factories run by few General AIs and a slew of robots with Genetic Algorithms.
What will happen to those people who have been replaced? They will be unemployed with no chance of ever getting a better life. Even without General AIs this is still happening in the first world because of outsourcing the manufacturing to third world countries. The greed that fuels capitalism is a great motivator but it is a very poor master.
How about recycling e
Lets be real here.
Let's talk about being "real". Look at the state of the world around us. Poverty, crime, illiteracy, slave wages, drugs, gangs, etc, etc, etc... etc, etc... and you think a little bit of "happy talk" is going to fix that? We're going to "fix" crime? We're going to "fix" poverty? No, I'm sorry, that's simply NOT going to happen.
You think that just because you don't see any progress we haven't been trying. That is absolutely NOT true. These issues have been brought up again and again as excuses to avoid the REAL issues. These are BYPRODUCTS, of much more fundamental social issues.
Furthermore, you misunderstood what I was saying in my previous post about how AI can be used. Certainly AI will be working at McDonald's before they are capable of "solving our problems".
The wage slaves are replaced with automatic factories run by few General AIs and a slew of robots with Genetic Algorithms. What will happen to those people who have been replaced? They will be unemployed with no chance of ever getting a better life.
No, that's not at all what will happen. Certainly before AIs are capable of completely replacing humans there will be a time where they merely assist humans. I don't see humans "replaced" by AI, I see humans assisted by AI. What you are claiming is the equivalent of saying the "hammer" will replace the human. Certainly not. Somebody must still "hold" the hammer. Besides the fact, that, at this point you are just getting in to wild speculation. Why are we even talking about AIs replacing humans? Probably because movies have so distorted people's perception reality. If we build the AIs, as a part of a capitalistic society, we WILL find a way to help them improve society. You are fearing "fire" even before any "fire" has been made. What would have happened if man had such an irrational "fear" of fire when it was fire discovered? You have been watching all kinds of movies, about how "fire" will burn you on a stake, alive, that you don't see all of the benefits that "fire" can bring. And you've never even seen REAL fire before. But you have seen sparks.
FluxIntegrator: All of that is great, and people have been trying to do these things for decades.
No they really haven't.
Yes, they really have. It practically saturates the news, does it not? I only here two things that are REGULARLY talked about on the news any more. First is the war in Iraq, and second are social issues. Social issues have prevaded the news for decades. We are simply not capable of making the changes that are needed. We are driven by economic incentives, and all the talk in the world is not going to change economics.
If these limited efforts have been unsuccessful does that mean that we should stop and wait for some mythical AI to come and solve our problems.
There is nothing "mythical" about AI. A lot of progress has been made in recent years. Limited "intelligence" exists in many of the things we buy already. I'm talking about a relatively minor change from current levels of AI to truly intelligent AI.
Do you know the operational capabilities of an AI that does even exist yet? Your faith in a technology that is nothing more than vaporware at the moment is disturbing.
I have no "faith" in anything. AIs by definition have Artificial Intelligence. That is a definition, not a "faith". That's all one needs to know. They are capable of thinking, and they are capable of solving complex problems. And we already know that they are NOT beyond our ability to construct, as limited AIs have already been constructed which demonstrate a resonable amount of intelligence.
What is distrubing to me is how much faith you put in people to just "change themselves". This seems to me to be an almost relig
No, actually I was right. I'm a cognitive scientist & the words that they're using indicate that they did not connect their simulated neurons in a manner consistent with known biology of any part of mouse cortex.
/on a macro scale/ doesn't mean that you can just wire together a bunch of neurons and call it an accurate simulation of the computations going on in brain. I suggest you read Kandell Schwartz & Jessel if you actually think all parts of cortex are doing the same thing. the network topology (i.e. the specific afferent/efferent connections at all layers everywhere is pretty much customized) is fundamental to brain computation and they simply didn't do anything consistent with mouse brain wiring. Therefore, the computation that IBM's simulation produced was essentially meaningless.
Spiking networks in the form of Hodgkin-Huxley model or other models (IBM's simulation sounds like "integrate & fire") have been around for quite a while.
Just because cortex is roughly regular
No, respectfully, sir, you are wrong.
I'm a cognitive scientist...
That is of no signfigance here. You cannot prove or disprove that to me, nor do I care.
This neuronal model has decent accuracy. If you look at the "words" I was using you will see they are are subjective. You are using absolutes to downplay the signficance of their research. I will quote you:
... & the words that they're using indicate that they did not connect their simulated neurons in a manner consistent with known biology of any part of mouse cortex.No respectable scientist would base an argument on their subjective interpretation and claim it to be fact. I highly doubt this is your field of expertise because of your naive understanding of this research something even related to a simple Hodgkin-Huxley model. The fact that you did not even look into their research makes me think that you are disregarding it simply because it does not benifit your field. This is a highly disgraceful behavior for a professional of any field. To mock the research of highly talented scientists and engineers working on this project is the lowest any professional can get.
Just because cortex is roughly regular
It is disgraceful that you would even claim that they just "wired" together a "bunch" of neurons. It shows you have little to no understand of the research, which the VERY clearly specified that at least an approximation to the topology of the cortex is used.
Go back to your hole in the ground, programmer.
(Yes, I admit that was "distasteful", but rightfully deserved. Computer programmers on this board are acting in an almost self-preservation mode, as if this reseach threatens their job and their very existence.)
Let's talk about being "real". Look at the state of the world around us. Poverty, crime, illiteracy, slave wages, drugs, gangs, etc, etc, etc... etc, etc... and you think a little bit of "happy talk" is going to fix that? We're going to "fix" crime? We're going to "fix" poverty? No, I'm sorry, that's simply NOT going to happen.
I agree with you on that. No amount of "happy talk" will fix anything. I'm talking about real action. Not just a few politicians making pretty speeches and everything stays the same. Change that can be felt by everyone. It can be done if enough people demand it. Not likely in the age of manufactured consent. Yet change starts with individuals. Individuals like you and me. Sharing ideas. Coming up with better ideas of how to do things.
Poverty and wage slavery can be fixed by creating an economy where all capable people have jobs that have decent salaries . Not likely going to happen in the current society where big business is better off with and relies on wage slaves and constant in-flux of people that are in a desperate need of a job.
The "fix" involves strong labour unions. And generally an economic environment where ever increasing consumption is not the goal.
Illiteracy can be fixed with education. A free, good education for all. Welcome to Finland for an example. I didn't pay a dime for my education except for the books at university and high school level. My education is a Master of Science degree from Tampere University of Technology. Our standing in the international PISA studies is very near or at the top very consistently. I can be done and has been done.
Drugs, gangs etc. can be "fixed" by creating a constructive outlet for your people. Create a society where there is no need to escape the monotony or lousy surroundings into drug induced euphoria. Or where gangs are the only way to survive a little longer. Instead of dealing with the problem fix the reason for the problem. Drug-use and gangs are the symptom not the reason.
You think that just because you don't see any progress we haven't been trying. That is absolutely NOT true. These issues have been brought up again and again as excuses to avoid the REAL issues. These are BYPRODUCTS, of much more fundamental social issues.
I agree. So why not fix the fundamental issues and not deal with the byproducts as you call them.
Furthermore, you misunderstood what I was saying in my previous post about how AI can be used. Certainly AI will be working at McDonald's before they are capable of "solving our problems".
So what will happen to the person on minimum wage flipping those burgers? He/She will be unemployed with no chance of a job because all other fast food places are also using the same AIs.
No, that's not at all what will happen. Certainly before AIs are capable of completely replacing humans there will be a time where they merely assist humans. I don't see humans "replaced" by AI, I see humans assisted by AI. What you are claiming is the equivalent of saying the "hammer" will replace the human. Certainly not. Somebody must still "hold" the hammer. Besides the fact, that, at this point you are just getting in to wild speculation. Why are we even talking about AIs replacing humans? Probably because movies have so distorted people's perception reality. If we build the AIs, as a part of a capitalistic society, we WILL find a way to help them improve society. You are fearing "fire" even before any "fire" has been made. What would have happened if man had such an irrational "fear" of fire when it was fire discovered? You have been watching all kinds of movies, about how "fire" will burn you on a stake, alive, that you don't see all of the benefits that "fire" can bring. And you've never even seen REAL fire before. But you have seen sparks.
AIs will replace people just as production lines and rudimentary automation replaced scores of workers during industrialization. And now with automation becoming
I think I have already begun to. I can see that you are agreeing with many of my main points.
I'm talking about real action.
That's just it. You're TALKING about real action. EVEN you, claiming to be enlightened as to what must happen before we see change, are merely TALKING. This is EXACTLY why no change will occur. The fact of the matter is: We do not know HOW to solve these problems that religions attribute simply to personal failure of one type or another. There is NO failure on the part of the person. There is only failure on the part of PEOPLE, as a society. WE define the NORMS. WE define what WE want to do, and ONLY the leaders that WE choose can change that. That is not something that you or I as individuals can change unless WE become those leaders. But that can only happen by CHOICE of the people, and so we have an unbreakable cycle that was started long ago, and once started could not, and can not be stopped.
Thus, what we see in society REFLECTS the state of society. Social issues reflect the very essence of human nature. At one time it was possible to control human nature through the religious nature of man. Those days are fading quickly because, as science and technology progress, we see how truth becomes incompatible with the dogmas of religion. That's the beautiful thing about truth. It's like a diamond reflecting light from its many facets. It changes depending on your perspective. As we learn more our perspective is constantly changing. As that change becomes ever more apparent, tension will build, until we snap.
Yet change starts with individuals. Individuals like you and me. Sharing ideas. Coming up with better ideas of how to do things.
The question is, do you have any better ideas? You're telling me you can come up with an idea that six BILLION people haven't been able to come up with? THEREIN, lies the problem. We are only as strong as our weakest link, and we are only as intelligent as the smartest man (or animal, for that matter), AT BEST. Humans, however, have been very resourceful and developed LANGUAGE. Language allows TWO people to increase their total intelligence. However, as the number of people grows, that "benefit" decreases, and reaches a limit. We can only talk to certain number of people in a day.
We need more intelligence to solve our ever more difficult problems.
Besides this fact, people are becoming apathetic to other people as technology has an increasingly pacifying effect. People are happy to live their lives the way they are, and see no need for change. The problem is, they WON'T see any need for change until major problems start occurring. We're tearing ourselves apart from the seams, on the verge of falling apart, yet apathy has made us indifferent.
And lastly, WE don't know what sources WE can trust, as every individual and institution has their own motives. I don't know what your motives are, although I'm sure you have motives, some of which are PROBABLY not for MY benefit. How do I know if I can trust you? (In fact, I'm working on a cryptography problem similar to this at this point, and it's not even a MATHEMATICALLY "easy" problem, as you may well already know.)
I'm actually not done yet in replying to all of your points. I have a lot of very tangible points I would like to make. I've been very interested in this particular topic for many years, and I have made a lot of progress in trying to understand the underlying problems, but they are certainly not "easy" problems. If you want to know MY motivations, and what drives, I'll tell you at least PART is the hope that, one day, people will remember me as a person of dignity, as a person who wanted the best for humanity. Why? Because I know that, ONE DAY, I'm going to die, and ALL that will be left of ME, as a person, will be how people remember me. Needless to say, I do not believe in an afterlife. But I know that this is simply not how most people on Earth think. Most people on Earth think, that NO matter WHAT they do, they'll be forgiven and live an eternally blissful life. What would YOU do?...
Look, the fact that they simulated a mouse scale network does not mean that it was computing mouse-like brain processes. Where exactly in that research report did they "VERY clearly specified that at least an approximation to the topology of the cortex is used"? If you're talking about their using a mean # of afferent/efferent connections spiking at 1Hz mean rates, that doesn't magically create a visual, auditory, motor, or olfactory cortical area. Since cortex computes sensory perception and motor responses and they didn't have any sensors or effectors hooked up, what exactly do you think that their simulation was computing? I'm not insulting them by saying their sim is not accurately computing mouse cortex processes, I'm pointing out that you're misinterpreting their research and making claims about it that they are not. By the way the Hodgkin Huxley model simulates depolarization waves along the cellular membrane; the models in the papers they cite do not. Therefore the HH model is higher fidelity than what they are using. The main problem with any neural network model of cortex is that the topology cannot possibly be accurate because there simply isn't enough known about the biology of anything more complex than fly. We don't know how mouse brain is wired at a level necessary to accurately simulate it. If three guys at IBM had somehow leapfrogged wads of neuroscience labs by at least a decade and actually figured out mouse brain topology, that would be the cover article in Nature and Nobel Prize worthy. But they didn't.
You pretty much don't know what you're talking about, and if you continue to trumpet your misinterpretation of this research you will continue to misinform people who aren't trained to interpret the research in the context of the field, and embarrass yourself to those who are.
By the way the Hodgkin Huxley model simulates depolarization waves along the cellular membrane; the models in the papers they cite do not. Therefore the HH model is higher fidelity than what they are using.
I was studying computational complexity improvements on the Hodgkin-Huxley model 15 years ago, so don't patronize me. Where the HH model does simulate single neurons accurately it's computationally infeasible at this level. But there is more than one way to define the "quality" of any neuronal simulation, as I'm sure you already know. And, if one looks at the OVERALL quality, given the scale, topology and general accuracy of the neuronal model, I would say this is supersedes ANYTHING that was done 50 years ago, BY FAR.
Where exactly in that research report did they "VERY clearly specified that at least an approximation to the topology of the cortex is used"?
Are you even reading the same paper I am? Not the short two page paper, but the longer preprint. I think this may be the problem. In any case, you should have been able to find it for yourself before bringing your accusations to me. It clearly specifies the setup they are using, and it's not at all what you are claiming. It seems you are incapable of doing simple research and understanding its implications.
You pretty much don't know what you're talking about...
Right back at you. You're not even looking at the right paper. Now, PLEASE, give it up. You are the one embarrassing yourself, especially if you are the "neuroscientist" you claim to be. Please, tell me, who comes on to the internet claiming credentials as an anonymous person??? Yeah, and I can claim I meet with Nobel Prize winners on a regular basis (which happens to be fact, but is completely irrelevant on the internet). You bring FACTS here, not credentials. Read the FULL paper this time, and see the FULL facts.
What sensory information did they feed it its brief life? Yeah yeah, this sim was just generalized neural matter. No real structure. But they are moving toward the real thing. I wonder what kind of experience they plan to give their creation. Bliss and contentment in a land of plentiful cheese with many family members around? Or running a maze?
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
I think I have already begun to. I can see that you are agreeing with many of my main points.
No, you have only begun to understand what my points are. No change in opinion is required.
That's just it. You're TALKING about real action. EVEN you, claiming to be enlightened as to what must happen before we see change, are merely TALKING. This is EXACTLY why no change will occur. The fact of the matter is: We do not know HOW to solve these problems that religions attribute simply to personal failure of one type or another. There is NO failure on the part of the person. There is only failure on the part of PEOPLE, as a society. WE define the NORMS. WE define what WE want to do, and ONLY the leaders that WE choose can change that. That is not something that you or I as individuals can change unless WE become those leaders. But that can only happen by CHOICE of the people, and so we have an unbreakable cycle that was started long ago, and once started could not, and can not be stopped.
That is what one generally does in a forum such as Slashdot. You do not know me well enough to judge whether I take action. And I do. I recycle. I try to minimize greenhouse gas emissions I am causing. I try to shop according to my beliefs. I try to affect a change in people around me, my family, coworkers, fellow slashdotters. I vote and write to my parliamentary representatives regularly and try to affect change in them. I try to get others involved as well. Democracy needs active people. It does not work with the manufactured consent that has been created by mass media. The cycle you are referring to can be broken. It will take a lot of effort but it can be done. Whether it can be done before a global disaster remains to be seen. But I am trying to do my very best that it will not come to pass. Are you?
Thus, what we see in society REFLECTS the state of society. Social issues reflect the very essence of human nature. At one time it was possible to control human nature through the religious nature of man. Those days are fading quickly because, as science and technology progress, we see how truth becomes incompatible with the dogmas of religion. That's the beautiful thing about truth. It's like a diamond reflecting light from its many facets. It changes depending on your perspective. As we learn more our perspective is constantly changing. As that change becomes ever more apparent, tension will build, until we snap.
Our reality is indeed changing. We are long overdue a change in society.
I like your analogy of the truth being like a diamond. Tension is indeed building in society. Worldwide. It remains to be seen how that tension will be released. Religion still is a powerful force in many parts of the world. In western countries its power is indeed fading fast. As it should. It has been largely replaced by another more subtle kind of control. Control by mass media and manufactured consent. People can be content to their existence when their basic needs are fulfilled and kept occupied by reality tv show of the week. Bread and circuses. This will not work indefinitely however.
The question is, do you have any better ideas? You're telling me you can come up with an idea that six BILLION people haven't been able to come up with? THEREIN, lies the problem. We are only as strong as our weakest link, and we are only as intelligent as the smartest man (or animal, for that matter), AT BEST. Humans, however, have been very resourceful and developed LANGUAGE. Language allows TWO people to increase their total intelligence. However, as the number of people grows, that "benefit" decreases, and reaches a limit. We can only talk to certain number of people in a day.
I think I have some good ideas. So do a lot of people. The problem is that a vanishingly small fraction of those six BILLION people have any hope ever implementing their ideas in a society bent on maintaining the status quo.
The individual can be smart. Society at large isn't. Ther