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Scientists Begin Mapping the Brain
Raindance writes "A team at the University of Utah has unveiled a system to map and digitize brain tissue — thus fulfilling one of the long-standing holy grails of neuroscience and enabling for the first time in-depth analysis of how mammalian neural networks function. So far, maps for the entire retina and related neural networks have been released; no ETA on a full-brain digital reconstruction yet. (One of the lead authors hangs out here on Slashdot.)"
Maybe I can finally get that direct neural interface I have always wanted :)
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
Then you can start all over again and map my brain.
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So a while back I was chatting to a maths guy over coffee and we started wondering about the brain. He figured that the average number of synapses between any two purkinje cells was just over three - now that would seem to be pretty interconnected, to the extent that cortical differentiation really isn't all that.
In 500 mm turn right at the Hippocampus, and you have reached your destination.
Seriously, this is pretty cool. Genomics and protenomics are cool, but you have to map the brain to understand it...
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
Once they have it mapped, they can warehouse the data, and come along in a few hundred years and run it in a simulation.
Seriously.
There's certain schools of thought that subscribe to the view that if you can save a complete state of the brain, there's no reason why, with exponentially increasing compute, you couldn't come along later and start it running again...
If you are going to start talking about the inevitable result, you need to think about patterning consciousness, and some big philosophical issues...
Bullshit. A complete map of a brain of someone with and someone without gene XYZ will tell us about the role played by gene XYZ without the ethical or temporal problems associated with creating an XYZ knockout. A neural network running a simulation of a human brain would be a Turing-complete strong AI. Throw a evolutionary algorithm onto this, and you can start looking at where different types of selective breeding could take humans, or the long-term effects drugs could have on personality.
That's off the top of my head; there'll be a million and one uses for this eventually (ever wanted to live forever inside a computer?). Besides, this is in the preliminary stages, they are still doing stuff like classifying synapses by hand. By the time this is workable, we may already know what consciousness is.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
There's certain schools of thought that subscribe to the view that if you can save a complete state of the brain, there's no reason why, with exponentially increasing compute, you couldn't come along later and start it running again
That would be determinism, and would require precise measurements for future reproducibility - the further into the future you go, the more precise they would have to be to remain accurate to reality. And it in no way accounts for stimuli, the very things of which one is conscious. So maybe you could restart a simulation, and it could last a short time, but it would not remain accurate long, and would not be able to handle changes in input.
This may be of use for diseases, but the greatest use - understanding consciousness - is still well beyond simply mapping the brain
A variation on the sentiment "Why bother investigating this, it's beyond our understanding and is useless," which has been posed at some point to every serious scientific inquiry. "Why study fungus, you can't do anything useful with it!" is probably something Flemming heard right before he discovered penicillin.
Fortunately it's often wrong. In this case, it seems to me that knowing the map of a brain could have some real tangible uses
-Understanding the sequence of wiring a brain, we know some things about the order in which brain cells develop, and we know unconnected neurons die, but beyond that I'm not sure we know anything. Is there an organization to how the brain initializes itself? Could this be one thing that goes wrong in, say, autism?
-Better understanding of the interconnectivity of different regions of the brain. Obvious uses there for dealing with lesions to the brain, if you learn from this study that one of the areas damaged is highly connected to a distant part of the brain, you might want to watch out for effects on that other part of the brain
-Helping us understand how or if new neurons generated in adulthood integrate into the already existing, quite complicated network
-altering something and seeing how that affects the brain map, to study the plasticity of the brain and possibly learn how to learn better
That's just the ones I could think up, there are undoubtedly more reasons one of the authors could fill you in on, and there are probably even more uses that even they haven't thought of, that some other researcher will.
Anyway, since when did science ever need to have a clear use in mind before we did something? If you're anything like the typical slashdotter, you don't bother asking "What good will that do" when discussions of "Let's land on the moon or mars" come up. I would argue that this is clearly more useful than that, but that doesn't matter, it's not about knowing all that we can gain from an endeavor in advance.
It looks like this method, as others, divide the brain into slices for mapping. Doesn't the slicing of soft tissue make it difficult or impossible to determine the exact point of connection between slices? I imagine it like dividing a plate of spaghetti, and then trying to determine which noodles were connected to which just by looking at their new positions, whereas their previous positions were determined, in part, by the connections themselves, and the slicing process has introduced entropy.
Are the brains frozen into a solid before slicing? If not, how do you preserve the arrangement? If yes, have you had any problems with zombies trying to eat the braincicles?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Exponentially increasing != infinite
This is a MASSIVE mistake that sci-fi (aka syfy) writers make all the time when talking about computer power. Just because you have a lot, and you will have a lot more later, doesn't mean you have enough to compute everything.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Plus every year the scanning tech will get better and better, maybe someday they will beable to do scanning to backup people regualrly like we backup our songs on our iPod.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
A neural network running a simulation of a human brain would be a Turing-complete strong AI
I understand what you're saying here but there are a lot of non-trivial hurdles to get over, even assuming you can accurately scan and simulate the brain.
First, the brain also includes a lot of chemical transmitters which we really don't understand the function of yet. You would have to include them in your model as well, including the ones that don't originate in the brain.
Second, you have to interpret the simulated neuron firing into something that you can actually understand. It's pretty pointless for your brain-on-a-hard-drive to be saying 'hello' if you can't understand what it's saying. An accurate simulation of my mind would have all the neurons that control my breathing, lips, tongue, and vocal cords firing like crazy, but good luck figuring out what I'm saying.
Third, you have to be able to supply meaningful input into the brain. You're essentially talking about submitting a consciousness (assuming your simulation is 100% accurate) to the most horrible sensory deprivation imaginable. In order for your research to be useful, you would have to supply it realistic input (including feedback based on it's output) otherwise the brain would change drastically just from that.
Are you serious? There are plenty of samples of digitized vaginal tissue on the internet already. Many require credit cards, however.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Problem is, you'll never live inside a computer.
A copy of you could, of course. One can well imagine his brain mapped and 'ran' as a neural network in a computer. Nevertheless, you are still alive, and there are simply two creatures (is a human brain ran in a computer a human or a computer?) that, for a short period of time, thought exackly the same. Then, due to different stimulus and perhaps some imprecision in copying, your thought processes would slowly diverge, and the machine-you would think differently.
You cannot live forever inside a computer. You can copy yourself to a computer and then die, but that doesnt sound so cool anymore does it.
Nope.
Consciouness is just another part to figure out, and mapping the brain will start to pull it together to the point where we will be able to determine consciousness, not just understand it.
For example, most people related 'who they are' or knowing where the are in the universal as a critical part of consciousness.
Already we know which part of the brains tells you where you end and everything else begins. a critical piece to understanding consciousness.
We pretty much know where most the pieces the we think of consciousness comes from.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, it would need to be severely dumbed-down in order to pass the Turing Test. Electronic circuitry operates millions of times faster than the electro-chemical circuitry of the brain, plus it could have instant access to vast databases of information, and no human has that much and that accurate memory.
Didn't google already do that? With streetview? I'm sure I heard a car drive through my cortex the other night.
All good points; it's a big project. Mapping is an important, but not the final step.
The sensory deprivation aspect raises an interesting ethical problem -- if the simulated brain is in fact 100% accurate, then wouldn't running it without normal sensory input be the same as torturing a sentient person?
I suspect that part of creating a functional full-brain simulation will have to involve it's being embedded in a robot (or biological body) which can supply the expected sensory environment.
Agreed, GP is insane if he thinks this is useless. Replacement bodyparts early on we could replace eyes. Later on maybe we could extend the brain (add external storage). But this is useful in getting people to accept artificial limbs. We could build the matrix even if it is shitty at first. Understanding our brains is understanding ourselves. This never hurts! We could look at how information is routed and exploit it. We have some things like mnemonics. But with greater specifics we can get ourselves to think smarter (by that i mean do the act of thinking smarter, more efficiently). There are numerous applications for a map of the brain.
You can copy yourself to a computer and then die, but that doesnt sound so cool anymore does it.
Actually, it's still pretty cool. :)
When the alternative is figuring out how a car runs by staring at the engine and scratching your head, making a diagram starts to look like a pretty good idea...
Singularity
If we learn enough about the brain you could get a button that causes you to have an unending orgasm...
Your suggestion seems a tad ethically tricky. If you could actually accurately simulate a human brain, you'd pretty much be poking at a human.
If that doesn't bother you, hobos and poor kids are cheaper than supercomputer simulations...
Without RTFA, this seems silly to me. Great you can map the brain but what real science will be done? What predictions or deeper understandings will be acquired?
Here's the quick answer to that question, special for all those who didn't RTFA or read the answers to identical questions asked above:
Various complicated but important things.
I went through school, being told by science teachers that science really knows squat about the brain and how it works.
Obviously, researchers can't resist a mystery and an intellectual challenge, and I can see why it would be fascinating to try and unravel the mysteries about how the brain works.
I have a question for the neuroscientists however... what's so critically important about this work, to demand the enormous resources being sunk into this?
Do people remember all of the full "usable" gene mappings and correlations that were going to come out of the human genome project? We had smart genes, violence genes, political genes, blah blah blah, even though most of the genes were filler/junk lines of "code", which basically just meant we didn't know WHAT the hell they did. There was even a span of time when bio-med and genetic engineering firms were scrambling to patent various genes and their effects. It all turned out to be mostly a big joke, and I can see the same thing happening with a brain map--a la, "We've found out the part of the brain that makes people stupid! Line up at our testing centers to find out if YOU are a dumbass!"
It's easy. They'll just map the brain of developing embryos at every stage, and see how it all goes together. 2 cells, 4 cells, 8 cells -- how complicated can it get?
This isn't rocket science.
I would expect the fine detail of the neural pathways to be created more by environment than by genetics. Also, it is time-variant, and not just run on electrical impulses of neurons -- there are lots of chemicals that also affect brain function. You need more than just a map to simulate a brain. Although this is a good step in that direction. Like functional MRI, this is mostly just a tool to facilitate further understanding.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Not really that useful, since every one is different. Of course, the same could be said of brains, too.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Is that you Rimmer?
Dammit! Now my conductive tinfoil hat will backfire!
That which does not kill us makes us... st
Great novel.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
You lack imagination. Imagine a cyberspace aspect of yourself, permanently linked to the organic brain. The *mind* itself would be spread across both the organic and inorganic components. When the organic bits wore out, the consciousness might notice, cobble up another brain out of the leftover bits (using the same molecules if it was sentimental), and download the memories at deathtime (and since) back into the organic matrix and go on it's merry way. Reincarnation or Extreme medical treatment? Life after death? There's a lot of possibility there, particularly if a stored personality has essentially unlimited lifespan to wait for new inventions.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
And cheaper too, but the local authorities get so darned *fussy* about that sort of thing.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The scientists working on this problem suddenly realized they had found something! All were shocked at what their results were showing... Finally, one scientist, almost afraid to face the implications of this great discovery, broke the silence and spoke to his fellow researchers...
"This is... astounding... ...Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
To which one of his colleagues prompty replied:
"I think so, but where are we going to find a duck and a rubber hose at this late hour?"
Bow-ties are cool.
That is quite correct (especially the bit about environmental regulation, so long as we're talking about vertebrate brains), however, neurotransmitters largely just regulate when and the extent of the action potential running down the axon. It should be possible to simulate everything needed with nothing but a detailed understanding of the systems biology of the neurons; IE a map.
I can't seem to find a cite for this in my bookmarks, but I know it's been peer-reviewed before.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Well, if you could also somehow recreate the person's body, and fabricate a new brain based on your measured parameters (be it a biological or computerized brain), this would bring potential immortality to reality.
As for the copy problem... It's true that should a person die and their body and brain be replicated, they wouldn't be the original. However... If it was a very accurate copy, they couldn't tell, you couldn't tell, so why should it really matter? If you had a girlfriend, she died, and a copy was made, you could still potentially both life your life as if it had never happened.
Furthermore, consider the idea that a very large proportion of the molecules making the neurons of your brain have been replaced over your lifetime... You *are not* the same person you were 10 years ago, from a physical standpoint... Does that make you not you?
This tool may well never be accurate enough to back people's brain up (not to mention that how neurons are connected might not be the only important factor, some people have suggested that our memories are chemically encoded). However, in the short term , this tool has an incredible potential just for studying the brain and trying to understand it better. It could finally allow us to create a fairly detailed map of how all the different areas of the brain are connected together.
What's the difference?
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
But digital revolution taught us that precise duplication of information is easy. If this information is digital in its nature.
It might very well be that each neuron can be accurately characterized by several numbers (I'm not including connectivity information here). In this case it might be possible to accurately emulate brain.
Very true about the title.
And yeah, this announcement is a two-part release: first, a system/workflow which uses existing equipment (TEM, methods of metabolic analyses) but does so in a way that automates and streamlines mapping processes which were very time-consuming, and second, a map of the mammalian retina and related neural networks done with this system.
How complete is the map constructed by this workflow? Open question right now I would guess? I haven't dug into the parts of the paper that would answer this if it has a conclusive answer.
Also there's nothing limiting this workflow to brain tissue- that's just arguably the most immediately interesting application.
Wish you were posting from a named account.
This brain mapping would be great if they mapped an autistic brain and compared it to a 'normal' brain.
I want to know if there is a difference in 'architecture' between autistic and normal brains.
Actually speaking purely hypothetically it is possible to not only compute everything... but everything x2. Although it depends on your definition of everything. If there is somesort of subspace it's entirely possible you could put a computer in an alternate universe which makes our own look microscopic. Based on scale if there was a way to use this alter-dimensional computer you could theoretically build a system larger than our universe.
then the much bigger task of mapping the interconnections can begin. That should not be more than one or two orders of magnitude harder.
That's why you should RTFA. It's what people do when, you know, they want more information on a story summary.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Worked for the Asgard.
"If we learn enough about the brain you could get a button that causes you to have an unending orgasm..."
Well, I've heard that has already been done on mice... The story went that researchers had managed to hook the "orgasm center" of a mouse to a button, and placed the said button next to another button that dispensed food. The mouse then repeatedly pressed the orgasm button until it starved and died.
Of course not computing power to do everything. But you know that:
1) The brain would be a lower bound - even though we don't understand it, we know it's possible. Maybe we can't do it with little pieces of silicon but at worst we could build organic computers of the same primitives our minds are made up of. Unless the brain got magic soul bits we should be able to duplicate anything it does with enough effort.
2) We know evolution doesn't find the optimal solution, just whatever evolutionary path works. We should be able to design away parts that have no modern function.
3) We already know that certain things computers do better. We could do organic-silicon hybrid brains that'd be more efficient.
4) We could probably apply known techniques like ECC, parity checks and such to enhance reliability and accuracy.
6) My brain got rather limited space and support system, there's no reasons we couldn't build "brains" as large as data centers, just to win on sheer scale.
I don't think that any computer will ever break 256 bit AES encryption by brute force - the stars would go out first, but I think there's pretty clear indications that well over human brain power should be well within the possible. Though despite our apparently huge progress, the technology might still be centuries off as we're still only scratching the surface.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yes, the machine copy and original would quickly diverge. Also, the machine copy would not be affected by changes in hormones, blood sugar, disease, etc. But then, the you that you are today is different from the you that you were yesterday too. And if the machine me gets an unlimited internet connection and no requirement to work for a living, I'm sure he would be quite happy to download porn all day... unlike the real me. Knowing me, we'd probably quickly grow to hate each other.
On the other hand, if that is the only way that I or at least a simulacrum of me can be there to observe my grandchildren's weddings, will then that is pretty cool, isn't it? Sort of depends on how much control the machine me is allowed to have over it's own environment. But yes, it is more like hiring a watchdog that thinks a lot like you do to watch over your family than it is like being there yourself.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
>>A complete map of a brain of someone with and someone without gene XYZ will tell us about the role played by gene XYZ without the ethical or temporal problems...
Uh, no. Brains are plastic entities. A person who has gone to music school will have a much larger map for dealing with processing sound than a cultureless American. (Oh, wait, I'm a cultureless American.) In science, controls are essential for telling what changing variable X does, and unless you can control a person's behavior (thus raising the ethical and temporal problems you're trying to avoid), it will be hard to determine what gene XYZ does unless it's blatantly obvious.
>>A neural network running a simulation of a human brain would be a Turing-complete strong AI.
Uh, no. Or, well, maybe. Strong AI is probably impossible (as Searle has pretty convincingly argued). It would be a great tool, though, and very useful.
Without RTFA, this seems silly to me. Great you can map the brain but what real science will be done? What predictions or deeper understandings will be acquired?
Seems like figuring out how a car runs by making a diagram of the engine without know what each part does.
"Real" science?
I think that astronomers, geologists, paleontologists, and a great many other students of the observational sciences -- including many field biologists and anatomists -- would take offense at that characterization.
Just the ability to observe intricately how the brain is put together first is valuable enough knowledge without tinkering with the thing blindly.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Actually it was the inaccuracies in copying digital information that lead to the initial forays into chaos theory. Some people were doing a weather simulation and stopped it. They printed up the information and let it run. Later they re-entered the information and let it run again. This time the results were different. It turned out to be related to rounding. The computer was displaying only three decimal places, but was calculating much more. That miniscule difference between what was calculated and what was displayed was enough to alter the simulated weather significantly.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Map this!
Just because the brain map now run on silicon doesn't mean it doesn't have rights. Treating it as a test subject instead of a person is a sure way to wake up skynet or the cylons or that thing from "I have no mouth and I must scream"
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
No it wouldn't. He's not talking about re-running the simulation and it outputting the exact same thought patterns etc. as the original brain, he's jus talking about running a simulation of a brain from a stored model that would behave similarly to the original brain (as I read it anyway).
What do you mean by it not "remaining accurate long" and "not handling changes in input"? If it's a brain (simulated or real) then it changes its internal state in some structured way while it handles input, that's what a brain _does_.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Whooo! Best diet plan ever!!!
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
In terms of pure bit rate of calculations, we should have commodity desktop computers capable of outperforming our own brains within a decade. This paper (from 1997, but I doubt human brains have changed much since then) estimates our brainpower at 100 million MIPS, or 10^14 calculations per second. By comparison a Radeon HD4870 x2 graphics card is 2.4 TFlops (2.4 million MIPS at 1 flop/instruction), or roughly 1/5th of a human brain.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Yep that was Lorenz. I assume the brain map in TFA will be useful to the Blue brain project
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
As Godel elegantly demonstrated we cannot compute everything.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It seems everyone is too busy being flippant or dismissive towards you, so I will attempt to give you an answer.
1. Neuroscience is considered important in the medical field. The nervous system is important for almost every other bodily function if for no other reason than it is the control and communication system of the body.
2. the brain is one of the least understood of our organs, and arguably, one of the more important ones. Anything we can learn about it helps a lot at this early stage.
3. Scientists/med researchers are people too, and since people have diverse interests and passions, so do the scientists. They gravitate to fields that hold an interest/importance to them. Freedom of choice, etc....there is no pool of researchers and scientists that are assigned fields of study by some group/organization.
4. Because it's there. This is a central drive inherent in humans...to 'boldly go where no man has gone before', and can be attributed to many reasons to do so.
Curiosity, exploration for the thrill or ego(I was first!!!!), need to contribute/help, revenge/righting a perceived wrong...
Yeah, this is all just basic stuff, but can be easily overlooked or taken for granted. On one side(funding) you have special interests, on the other you have researchers with special interests. They have a habit of finding each other.
It gets to be easy to sit back and wonder 'why this and not that' from the outside. Maybe this will help:
(I'm not asking for an answer, just giving food for thought, but it's okay to answer!)
What do you do for a living? What got you into that, and why is it important to you? If not important to you(other than to make a living), then what would you want/like to do? Apply those answers to your question, and you may have an answer.(not trying to be an ass, but it's not an 'easy/one answer' question.
On a more personal note, I'm all for neuroscience to blast forward. At my age, my mind is in the best shape of any of my other 'parts', and I would love to be able to go into a body shop and have my brain transferred(by some means) to a new body. :-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
No, no, no, no. That's so short sited. You have to think of Real Uses for mapping your brain. Things like, your wife's birthday, where you put your keys last, what your girl friend said about some useless piece of information that she feels deeply about. I don't know about World Peace, but peace in my home would be like Shangrala.
In terms of pure bit rate of calculations, we should have commodity desktop computers capable of outperforming our own brains within a decade. This paper (from 1997, but I doubt human brains have changed much since then) estimates our brainpower at 100 million MIPS, or 10^14 calculations per second. By comparison a Radeon HD4870 x2 graphics card is 2.4 TFlops (2.4 million MIPS at 1 flop/instruction), or roughly 1/5th of a human brain.
OK, so a brain is worth five graphics cards.
But then, the brain only needs about 20 Watt. With five graphics cards, that would be 4 Watt per graphics card.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Which of course raises the question: Would it be ethical to treat an artificial brain like this?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Graphics cards don't have to be able to run on instant noodles and kebabs. If I could put a human-class AI on my desk I wouldn't care if it used a kilowatt, it'd still be cheaper than paying a human to do whatever job it is that I set it to.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Of course there's a difference between gradually replacing the neurons and just mapping them: With just mapping them, you get a copy of yourself. There's still the original you, which lives outside the computer.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
the same could be said about the microscope.... and that seems to have worked out pretty well so far.
Without hormones, the "machine you" would feel no need to watch porn.
Same goes for any "survival instinct" you might have, of which "love" is a derivate. So at most, watching your grandchildren would be a pointless bore.
Third, you have to be able to supply meaningful input into the brain. You're essentially talking about submitting a consciousness (assuming your simulation is 100% accurate) to the most horrible sensory deprivation imaginable. In order for your research to be useful, you would have to supply it realistic input (including feedback based on it's output) otherwise the brain would change drastically just from that.
I dunno.
I would find this very useful because in order to do an experiment just like this but with a live human would be very unethical and questionable.
It is kind of what the did back in the 1950's with cracking open mental patients skull and seeing what happened when they stuck an electrode at certain spots. Very educational but I'd rather them do it on a simulation if they could.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I'd hope that the "one of the lead authors" (isn't there only one lead author?) would correct some of the misstatements in the summary.
The system digitizes the map, not the brain.
Isn't "digitizes" a gratuitous inclusion by now?
Mapping can produce a static picture of a dynamic system. The brain works by changing its structure. Thus, the "functioning" they can discern will be extremely limited. Actual functioning could be mapped by remapping the same brain after learning and such, if the analysis is sufficiently fine grained.
Best guess right now is that there are over 100 billion (100 thousand million in the British system) neurons, and even more glial cells which are implicated in neural function. Interconnection of these is such that no neuron is farther than 6 connections from any other neuron, with an average of 3 connections between. Mapping a system like that is certainly possible. Analyzing that map statistically and understanding it may follow, but only in a limited sense and probably not for some time.
The mapping system may be able to describe the interconnections physically. This will do little to help describe the non-connection interactions of neurons via electrical field effects on nearby but not physically connected dentritic trees.
Despite shortcomings in the summary and possibly in the system itself, it's a fine step forward and could add a nice tool to the brain science tool box.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Yes and no. Without hormones, your basic instinctual drives would be nowhere near as strong. But you would probably still do things out of force of habit. I take care of my family now not because I enjoy it, but because of strongly held beliefs that I should do so. Take away the instincts, and a reasoned belief about my purpose in life still remains.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So you wouldn't care that your *real* wife or girlfriend was dead? The person that you grew to love... THAT person would be gone forever. If there is something that can be called a soul, it won't be inside the copy you made. It isn't the person you remember, even if they act like they are and appear to be. To me that is a HUGE difference.
can you accurately emulate changes in bloodflow, reaction to allergins and so forth that offer some diminished work and others increased motivation? The brain is only part of the equation--is a pure "brain" sufficient to emulate an effective human worker? (I am reading That Hideous Strength at the moment and have my questions on the rationality of such a project anyway)
Here, I'll throw out a juicy one. The pattern of connections in your brain may very well capture all of your memories. You know those people paying big bucks to be cryogenically frozen? This is a big step towards re-animating them - even if by grinding their original brain into powder by layers :)
What if there is no such thing as a soul?