[HN Gopher] Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain
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Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain
Author : mpweiher
Score : 59 points
Date : 2023-07-02 08:07 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.biorxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.biorxiv.org)
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Holy misleading title, batman. The linked preprint is talking
| about an adult _fruit fly_ brain:
|
| >> Here, we present the first neuronal wiring diagram of a whole
| adult brain, containing 5x10^7 chemical synapses between ~130,000
| neurons reconstructed from a female Drosophila melanogaster.
|
| Really need some clarification, that title does.
| [deleted]
| wiz21c wrote:
| In the article they say openness is really important. But when
| you to the website, you have to use Google Account... It's open
| yeah, but someone wants to track you on this...
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I was able to legally download the entire research PDF directly
| from the linked-to-URL -- without logging in [and I do not have
| any Alphabet accounts, with DNS-block].
| ggm wrote:
| Being tracked is different, and does not negate openly
| available. You don't get into every library in the world simply
| by turning up: identity has been a part of access since writing
| was invented. You can't request books from many libraries
| without identifying yourself and the works requested.
| Genghis_Khan wrote:
| In most libraries in the US, browsing the collection--even
| taking books from the shelves to a table for a while to read
| and make notes--does not require any sort of identification
| whatsoever. It's only when we temporarily deprive the library
| of a copy of a work, i.e., borrow it, that we have to
| identify ourselves.
| jakear wrote:
| In public libraries sure, but not in many academic
| libraries or other private ones. Which is of course where
| the more interesting (not mass-produced) content is held.
| tgv wrote:
| And nobody would call those open.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| On the contrary in every library I have been to you just walk
| in and browse the books. Last time I went to a university
| library a librarian was more than willing to help me find the
| books I needed and didn't ask any questions at all regarding
| my identity. I dare say that she would have refused to let me
| walk out with the books but that's understandable and anyway
| I wanted to refer to them not take them away.
| boesboes wrote:
| That's not quite the same. I'm not required to make an
| account with Google to go to the library. Being registered by
| a government agency and being tracked by multi-national that
| is famous for abusing tracking data are on a different planet
| imo.
|
| The problem, for me at least, is that I do not use google
| products. I do not have an account and do not want one. So
| for me, this is not openly available. We could argue about
| the merits of being so principled in not using google, but
| that seems besides the point :) I should be free to no do
| business with Google and if that precludes me from accessing
| something, it is not openly available I'd say
| jmptable wrote:
| Also of interest is the paper, "A leaky integrate-and-fire
| computational model based on the connectome of the entire adult
| Drosophila brain reveals insights into sensorimotor processing",
| which discusses the results of simulations of this dataset with
| the Brian2 spiking neural net simulator. They activate the same
| input neurons in the simulator and real flies and show that there
| is similar downstream behavior in the sim and real neural
| circuits.
| dpflan wrote:
| The lead author of the paper, Sven Dorkenwald, shared more
| resources on Twitter. Here are excerpts:
|
| """
|
| We are releasing a whole-brain connectome of the fruit fly,
| including ~130k annotated neurons and tens of millions of typed
| synapses!
|
| Explore the connectome: https://codex.flywire.ai
|
| Reconstruction paper:
| https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.27.546656v1
|
| Annotation paper:
| https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.27.546055v1
|
| There are multiple ways to access the data and the number of
| tools is growing! https://flywire.ai/apps
|
| Codex: https://codex.flywire.ai
|
| CATMAID spaces: https://fafb-flywire.catmaid.org
| http://Braincircuits.io:
| https://braincircuits.io/app?p=fruitfly_fafb_flywire_public
|
| """
|
| - Original Tweet Thread:
| https://twitter.com/sdorkenw/status/1674859033076072448
| porblem wrote:
| [dead]
| comfypotato wrote:
| Only a matter of time before this goes the way of the open worm
| project. Incredible that they've increased the number of neurons
| imageable by this magnitude. A similar increase from here would
| encompass the human brain. Models of the human brain would likely
| be indistinguishable in every way, shape, and form from the real
| thing.
| aperrien wrote:
| Interestingly, the NeuroMechFly project [1] already exists, so
| integrating the two together may already be under way. At 50
| million synapses, a modest gaming PC should be able to run the
| simulation. I wonder what people will think once they are able
| to do this at home?
|
| [1] https://prelights.biologists.com/highlights/neuromechfly-
| a-n...
| minihat wrote:
| What will we do with a completed connectome?
|
| Imagine handing a late 1800s scholar a modern processor. Give
| him a wiring diagram, and a voltmeter. What could he learn from
| it?
|
| The connectome will be a big step, but not the penultimate one,
| in solving human intelligence.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "penultimate" means "next-to-last"; I'm thinking you used the
| wrong word, or are making an obscure point I don't follow.
| ecks4ndr0s wrote:
| Maybe trying to reverse engineer it using GNNs until they
| produce the same output(within some error margin) for various
| arbitrary inputs? Dunno.
| Retric wrote:
| I am sure there's a great deal we can learn about how the
| brain actually functions from such simulations.
|
| However GNNs don't really capture the underlying mechanisms
| very well. Our brains use different kinds of Neurons which
| also use many different neural transmitters, their location
| in 3D space matters, as do stuff like blood alcohol
| content, O2 levels, adrenaline, signal propagation delays,
| etc it's a stupidly complicated system even above and
| beyond the number of neurons.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Also limiting it to neurons ignores all of the activity
| and modulatuon that's increasingly being attributed to
| astrocytes and other CNS "scaffolding"
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable in
| every way, shape, and form from the real thing._
|
| Models that are just a map of connections certainly wouldn't
| indistinguishable from a human brain. Every single one of the
| trillions of human neurons is a quite complicated object.
| Neurons communicate with each other in a number of ways and
| neuroscience isn't even certain that communication methods have
| been found.
| comfypotato wrote:
| This discussion is in the context of the open worm project.
| It has successfully modeled the neurons of a nematode such
| that the organism model functions inside a physics engine as
| would the real organism.
|
| Extending this to humans, the neuron models are good enough.
| I've done enough biomedical engineering research in the
| neuroscience domain to tell you: the problem is imaging the
| connections, not modeling the neurons.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable
| in every way, shape, and form from the real thing._
|
| Except all those pesky qualia...
| ben_w wrote:
| Can you distinguish between a system that did and a system
| that didn't have qualia? I think that would be a major
| breakthrough.
| comfypotato wrote:
| In the correct physics engine, with the correct models of
| eyeballs etc., a connectome-based model may experience
| qualia. It would likely tell us that it experienced qualia.
|
| The biggest difference would be that new connections wouldn't
| be formed, so it wouldn't learn.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _In the correct physics engine, with the correct models
| of eyeballs etc., a connectome-based model may experience
| qualia. It would likely tell us that it experienced
| qualia._
|
| Sure. It would say it touched water. It would just not
| actually be wet. Which is something...
| ben_w wrote:
| When I dream of swimming, do I have the qualia of wetness
| at the time, or does that only happen when I wake and
| remember the dream?
|
| Any neuroscientists here: does anyone know that much
| about dreams? My memory of philosophy lessons was that
| philosophy doesn't keep up with the latest in real
| science...
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| but the corresponding cluster of neurons in a brain isn't
| actually wetted by the touched water either.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, but it receives the input from an actual experience
| of the body it's embodied in - from an actual wet thing.
| As opposed to being served a simulation of the same.
|
| This simulated isolated "brain" is like a heart
| mechanically assisted to be pounding in a glass jar.
| Sure, it's still beating, but not as part of its place
| and environment, in a living being.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Where would you say experience ends, and qualia begins?
| The way these words are being used seems to make little
| distinction between them other than one referring to a
| specific instance of what the other refers to in
| generalized terms.
|
| As for myself I would argue that an experience, and
| therefore qualia, amount to an accumulated and
| generalized succession of multiple sensory inputs
| amalgamated by feedback and hysteresis over time, and
| informed by the gross structure and constraints of the
| sensory apparatus they are carried upon.
| comfypotato wrote:
| Not so different a question than asking where "synapses
| and neurotransmitters" end and the experience of
| consciousness begins.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Models of the human brain would likely be indistinguishable
| in every way, shape, and form from the real thing.
|
| Eventually, but the more I learn, the more I think that's going
| to be an ethical nightmare to even test.
|
| First brain to get the We Are Bob treatment is going to get
| almost every neurotransmitter slightly wrong, and be tripping
| as if they're suddenly alternating between ketamine/cocaine,
| LSD/antipsychotics, and every other pair of opposite impact
| substances you can think of.
|
| I keep hearing doctors saying things like "we don't really know
| how general anaesthetic works" and "we don't know why sleep and
| dreams are biologically necessary, only what happens if you
| miss them" for example, and those feel like important things to
| understand when building models for simulation.
| comfypotato wrote:
| The neuron models used in the open worm project...
| function...
|
| That is to say that the complete organism model can learn to
| swim, which about all the organism is supposed to be able to
| do.
|
| I see what you're saying though, that human-level function
| will likely be much more difficult to fine-tune.
|
| The ethics of it all are a philosophical wormhole.
| Ultimately, its "consciousness" would be an image of a real
| person. I don't think we would have to worry about it too
| much. Saying it was truly conscious would be like saying that
| a video of a person was conscious.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Saying it was truly conscious would be like saying that a
| video of a person was conscious.
|
| I hope we believe what's true, regardless of what that
| happens to be -- we get bad futures either way, if we think
| sims are conscious when they're not, or if we think they're
| not when they are.
|
| I've used the film/TV analogy myself, just over a year ago,
| when it was GPT-3 (and LaMDA behind an NDA) rather than
| ChatGPT et al:
| https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2022/06/18/lamda-
| turin...
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