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A Skeptical Reaction To IBM's Cat Brain Simulation Claims

Posted by timothy on from the why-stop-at-dog-brain-after-all dept.

kreyszig writes "The recent story of a cat brain simulation from IBM had me wondering if this was really possible as described. Now a senior researcher in the same field has publicly denounced IBM's claims." More optimisticaly, dontmakemethink points out an "astounding article about new 'Neurogrid' computer chips which offer brain-like computing with extremely low power consumption. In a simulation of 55 million neurons on a traditional supercomputer, 320,000 watts of power was required, while a 1-million neuron Neurogrid chip array is expected to consume less than one watt."

10 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Does anyone really know what a cat thinks? by cyberspittle · · Score: 5, Funny

    Think about it. Think about it like a cat.

    1. Re:Does anyone really know what a cat thinks? by jhoegl · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey... whats that moving dot on the wall? Why is it there? I must have it! Great! I captured it! Wait, whats this? It escaped me, inconceivable!!! What luck, it stopped right by my paw, Ill will capture it again! NNNNOOOOOOO!!!! Look, look there, its something moving under my feet. I must pounce it to figure out what it is! Weird, I pounced it and its still moving. Ill pounce it again! Ah, there it stopped moving, Ill sniff it now. Wait, its moving again... Curse you!

  2. nonlinear by Garble+Snarky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wouldn't power consumption grow more than linearly with neuron count? I would think the number of connections is the dominant factor - so the comparison of two data points of power consumption vs neuron count is meaningless.

  3. All those neurons using less than 1 watt? by drainbramage · · Score: 5, Funny

    All those neurons using less than 1 watt?
    I know some people like that.

    --
    No brain, no pain.
  4. long ways to go yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the original FA: "The simulation, which runs 100 times slower than an actual cat's brain, is more about watching how thoughts are formed in the brain and how the roughly 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses in a cat's brain work together."

    So the most bad-ass computer simulation, assuming it worked, which this guy is saying it probably didn't, was still 100 times slower than a real cat's brain. A real cat's brain also fits inside a tiny furry space the size of a baseball... and it runs on a once-daily small bowl of cat food. We have a long ways to go.

    1. Re:long ways to go yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      More than this, their simulated neurons aren't anywhere close to the real thing. A real neuron, an individual cell, has tremendous computing power due to the distribution of a bunch of different ion channel types (active conductances) in a highly complex dendritic tree. Simulating a few seconds of just ONE neuron accurately can take several minutes to several hours of supercomputer time. I know this because I do it for a living.

    2. Re:long ways to go yet by toppavak · · Score: 5, Informative

      He's not arguing that it didn't work, he's arguing that they essentially ran a simulation of a large Artificial Neural Network, a relatively trivial task as long as you have a big enough computer behind it. ANNs are essentially points that connect to each other and learn by assigning weights to these various connections- this is essentially the simplest possible way to simulate the behavior of a neuron. The argument is being made that to claim an ANN, regardless of its size, approaches the capabilities of any mammalian brain is simply wrong, and that a true attempt to create such a simulation would need to factor in the stochasticity of ion channels, branchings in neurons and various other biological phenomena that have a tremendous impact on how our brains work.

      Without reading more details on the original work, I'm inclined to say that he has a very valid point if they were indeed only running a large ANN model.

  5. Skeptical? by golden+age+villain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This IBM announcement was just ridiculous. To cite only one argument, the brain does not consist only of neurons. It contains at least as many other cells which are also involved in signal processing. Mohda would be laughed at in any neuroscience conference and he certainly doesn't help the cause of theoreticians in the neuroscience field by making such stupid announcements. Eugene Izhikevich who designed the neuron model being used for these simulations had a PNAS paper not too long ago modeling the entire human brain and he did not claim that he successfully modeled the human brain. Plus no one has any clue how the brain computes really so making a claim about the formation of thoughts is just nonsense.

  6. Markram's for real by bellwould · · Score: 5, Informative

    My research recently took me to some of Markram's work - the guy is brilliant and REALISTIC. His research goals are simple and attainable and any claims of success he has are *well* within the real world. He's incrementally worked his way up from a few neurons - the way a *real* scientist works; and to him, the simplest "brain simulation" of any sort is definitely possible, but far off in the future.

  7. Re:Almaden's Dharmendra Modha: You got pwned! by yt.rabb+at+gmail · · Score: 5, Funny

    The only thing missing from that email was his momma. Hey Mohda, Your momma's research methodology is so flawed, that she puts the hypothesis to be proven as an assumption. Biatch.