From: Rüdiger Koch (rkoch@rkoch.org)
Date: Mon Apr 01 2002 - 14:12:10 MST
Hey, the Mouse was a joke, not a practical proposal. The point I want to get
across is: Once we
1. have sufficient HW power
2. have sufficiently advanced scanning technology
then instantiating a brain is engineering and will not require further major
quantum leaps in science.
For simple organisms (up to Salamander or so) you already can buy the
necessary HW/SW from our salary if your salary is good (a 100 SMP PC,
Myrinet, a Linux CD, Amygdala) if Moravec is right with his estimates. Of
course if Penrose is right then no Linux cluster will help, regardless of
it's size.
Hey, words are cheap. Where is the code? -> I've heard that it's custom to
offer bets on this list. What about this: If someone gives me a map of a
drosophilia brain with all neurons and their connections we'll have an
Amygdala NN that likes to eat virtual fruit and fly around virtual jam jars
in less than 8 months. USD5,000. , anyone?
There is no need to simulate on the molecular level - capturing all relevant
information theoretical aspects of spiking and synapse strength adjustments,
maybe also gap junktions (and leaving out all quantum information theoretical
micro tubule bull^H^H^H^H theories) will get us there, I am sure of that.
-Rudiger
On Monday 01 April 2002 11:29, you wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Rüdiger Koch wrote:
> > Nope. But I would not worry about this part of uploading technology. Once
> > scanning technology is developed enough we can scan a mouse and
> > instantiate it into different neuron models until we find it eats virtual
> > cheese ;-)
>
> A more robust approach would seem to start with a series of
> well-characterized organisms, e.g. D. discoideum -> C. elegans -> Aplysia
> -> D. melanogaster->M. musculus-> H. sapiens, validating behaviour in
> machina along each step.
>
> Apart from scaling issues one would have to develop new methods at each
> step. C. elegans is still small enough for a conventional manual tracing
> from EM micrographs, but the next steps will require machine vision, and
> then automated imaging. Mice (and certainly men) are too large to be
> imaged en bloc (the surface, that is), requiring recursive subdision into
> individually imaged blocks.
>
> Another issue is development of new simulation paradigms, as larger
> organisms are impractical to simulate even on large scale molecular
> circuitry machines.
-- Rüdiger Koch http://rkoch.org Mobile: +49-179-1101561
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