Slashdot Mirror
How the Brain Organizes Everything We See
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a UC Berkeley news release:
"Our eyes may be our window to the world, but how do we make sense of the thousands of images that flood our retinas each day? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the brain is wired to put in order all the categories of objects and actions that we see. They have created the first interactive map of how the brain organizes these groupings."
one small step for a university, one huge leap for our roadmap towards simulating a brain. Another one recent example of our progress in this was the Spaun brain model ( a small one that is, IIRC 12million neurons ) which was featured on slashdot as well, and also the older blue brain project http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/
I can't wait for the moment ( within 20 years hopefully ) when we will have a full human brain simulation. the possibilities from that point are endless. Maybe our last invention!
These a priori categories exist, and are proven empirically.
Here, for the browser deficient:
Warning:This page uses WebGL, an experimental web technology. It will not work in all browsers or on all platforms. For the best experience we recommend using Google Chrome, maximizing the size of your browser window, and closing other running applications (this viewer takes quite a bit of RAM).
It's data intensive and would likely turn your iPhone into a spot welder for the second or two it would take to trash the battery. Some things need REAL COMPUTERS(TM) to work well.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Puts boobs top of the list
Technically speaking, large mammary glands are just an evolutionary trick to get the male of the species to..., Whoa! Would you get a load of those Ta-Tas!!!...
Ahem, uh, where was I, oh yeah. Female breasts are really just mounds of fat tissue... Aw jeez, those are NICE!!
Hi, I actually programmed the software that displays the brain. Let's make this clear -- this is a full blown scientific visualization software. We actually use this in our day to day research. It conveniently allows a layperson to view it on their browser, but that was not the original intention. You wouldn't run a nuclear power plant using your iphone, and we don't do our research using tablets. :-p
Second of all, I am a graduate student making 30k a year. I programmed this in my spare time as a service to my lab. If you pay me to write it for android and ios, i'd gladly do so. But I'm not paid enough to listen to ugly flames like this
Only Apple has the privilege to create a web rendering engine on iOS. So you're stuck waiting for Apple to make a version of Safari that allows WebGL applications to make use of this "gigabyte of ram and the equivalent processing power of a 3ghz p4".
I imagine this would be mapped from the brains of "like" individuals- not necessarily of the same sex, race, etc, but usually from one geographic area. The problem with is that maybe this is not how all brains "map" learned things, but maybe a result of western thinking/education. Perhaps native Americans, who might view trees as just as close to humans as pigs are, might have quite a different "mapping." It would be interesting to see if this was a result of how our education system is (Western species/classification) geared rather than how our brains actually group things (as in, perhaps it is a manifestation of our education system rather than inherent organizational heuristics in the brain).
You seem to be missing something. These people are scientists. They get paid to publish papers. You can get the paper from Neuron, where it was published. (You can find it elsewhere too if you look.) The online viewer was just gravy, they didn't get paid to do it, they don't get any direct science benefit from it (no ad $ or citations). As a previous poster noted, this uses WebGL which isn't yet available on IOs. Given that most real science is done on real computers, and that his viewer is likely targeted primarily at real scientists, your complaint seems odd.
You are confused. The job is NOT the visualization. The job is doing the research and publishing the results. The visualization is something extra that is not being paid for. If you want a different visualization, you pay for it.
Not to mention that as others have said, sometimes having better performance is more important than having it work on your toys.
The whole reason we have slashdot is that people don't categorize through the same myopic self-interest. We all have a different myopic self-interest.
Nokia N900 -- WebGL is available in the stock microB browser from the PR1.2 firmware update onwards.
BlackBerry PlayBook -- WebGL is available via WebWorks and browser in PlayBook OS 2.0
Firefox for mobile -- WebGL is available for Android devices in unstable builds since early 2011.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia range of Android smartphones have had WebGL capabilities following a firmware upgrade.
Opera Mobile 12 final supports WebGL (on Android only).
The very first thing I'm going to look for is cognitive cleft of can't/won't. It'll be somewhere near penis size, which should be hard to miss if they included in their leader reels any Bourne or Bond or Bay.
The airlines and credit card companies are busy trying to brainwash the masses that Team Cool is first in line for every feature attraction. After soaking this up, it must come as a huge and unwelcome surprise to find Team Clue in the express lane when the feature attraction is momentous enough to separate the men from the boys.
The second thing I'm going to look for is the locus of trolls who culminate with a car metaphor. It'll be somewhere right beside superior glow.