[HN Gopher] Ambitious Brain Recordings Create Unprecedented Port...
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Ambitious Brain Recordings Create Unprecedented Portrait of Vision
in Action
Author : gmays
Score : 87 points
Date : 2022-05-20 14:57 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hai.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (hai.stanford.edu)
| sdenton4 wrote:
| I guess if you have to pay attention to correlations in noise,
| you can't really call it 'noise' anymore...
| steg132 wrote:
| Didn't they do this in The Dark Forest?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Studies like this one are small steps forward, but the advance is
| surprisingly steady. Maybe people in a century will make fun of
| us brutes for not knowing how our brains worked.
| mromanuk wrote:
| I know what you mean. I suspect future people will marvel on
| how we managed to do things and how we invented and discovered
| things. At least that's how we see our ancestors now, but yes,
| some of our behavior will look quite barbaric
| devindotcom wrote:
| Fascinating study, and it's telling that it was done using more
| traditional fluorescence techniques instead of the newfangled
| microelectrode arrays supposedly due to revolutionize the field.
| (not optogenetics as replier points out, that's for activating
| via light, not expressing fluorescence)
|
| It's stuff like this that reminds me how little we understand of
| how even a highly structured area like the visual cortex, where
| there are practically purpose-built clusters of cells for certain
| features and contours. Good luck doing this in the frontal
| cortex!
|
| But this is where it starts. We don't need to jump the queue and
| go straight to "the exact location of love" as we often see in
| bad science reporting. Nevertheless I'm sure we will see
| headlines like "watch a thought race across a brain" and the
| like. Ah well, the research is what's important.
| andbberger wrote:
| this was done with fluorescence imaging, not optogenetics,
| which is a perturbation technique not an imaging method.
|
| i don't know where you're hearing that microelectrode arrays
| are due to revolution the field, but no neuroscientist thinks
| that. ephys is used for high temporal resolution activity
| measurements of a small population of neurons. it's not a new
| technique. if anything is revolutionizing the field it's
| fluorescent imaging which is in widespread use for imaging
| large populations of neurons (or even the whole brain in
| drosophila) at decent spatiotemporal resolution.
|
| each technique has it's place.
|
| > where there are practically purpose-built clusters of cells
| for certain features and contours
|
| that's not really true. in mammalian visual cortex V1 is
| probably best characterized but we're still a ways from a
| complete understanding. see
| http://redwood.psych.cornell.edu/papers/V1-article.pdf
|
| the optic lobe of drosophila has been characterized in far
| greater detail (where we afforded such luxuries as connectomes)
| but we are still a long way from a complete understanding of
| that
| Teever wrote:
| > fluorescent imaging which is in widespread use for imaging
| large populations of neurons (or even the whole brain in
| drosophila) at decent spatiotemporal resolution.
|
| Where can I learn more about this?
| andbberger wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-
| photon_excitation_microsco...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescence_imaging
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_imaging
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_encoded_voltage_i
| n...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCaMP
| devindotcom wrote:
| Quite right on optogenetics, that's the other way round.
|
| I should have been specific but I didn't mean what scientists
| think is useful but what the general public thinks will
| change how we understand the brain, andrhe most popular news
| in the last couple years relating to brain imaging and BCIs
| is surely Neuralink. Certainly neuroscientists know their own
| business better than that.
|
| The V1 stuff is what I was referring to, in that there are
| coherent and common pathways for recognizing low level
| details like contours. As I recall it is just way more
| purposefully structured than the more generalized frontal
| cortex areas. Definitely not suggesting we have achieved
| anything like complete understanding, or even what complete
| understanding would look like!
| andbberger wrote:
| check out the olshausen paper I linked
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