From: Eugene Leitl (eugene@liposome.genebee.msu.su)
Date: Wed Apr 22 1998 - 08:14:32 MDT
Anders Sandberg writes:
> You bet :-) My scenario is like this: in 2030, nanotechnology has
> helped neuroscientists to understand neurons so well that they can be
> simulated with high fidelity, and some research teams have managed to
> "scan" the nervous system of trained C Elegans individuals into
My scenario is like this: in 1997 (?), a group of researchers become
interested in creating a realistic model of C. Elegans, including data
from cryosections, immunostaining, voltage-sensitive dyes, mutant data,
morphogenesis, cytoskeleton simulators, soon to become available total
sequence data, etc. They initiated the 'Cyberworm' project. Somewhen
between now and 2030 they succeeded. Of course the Aplysia emulator
crew gave them a head race ;)
> computer models by hand. Some bright nanoengineer comes up with a good
> disassembly process that can disasseble solid matter, recording its
We have such proceses. The nematode is so small you can flash-vitrify
it, and use e.g. progressive vacuum sublimation of water glass whilst
imaging the surface with an AFM and/or immunolabeled-cell SNOM or
plain transmission EM. A complementary etch could be UV laser
photodissociation, or a very thin plasma/ion beam etch.
> structure with a high precision. There are already useful pattern
> recognition software out there, and one just has to combine the
Yes, after DSP filtering the voxelset you can apply contrast
enhancement, outline tracing, segmentation, whatever. Neural and GA
DSP should make this relatively easy.
What really bugs me that we have a very good outline of the process
already. The rest is just a lot of drudgery, and some serious money,
and perhaps a few advances in the SPM/EM/Xray microcopy,
high-performance computing areas, high-density memories, video DSP
algorithms, etc. Don't get me wrong, immense work still has to be
done, but it is not Science Fiction anymore while the mainstream still
thinks it is.
> different processes to get uploading. Everybody in the neuroscanning
[...]
ciao,
'gene
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:48:57 MST