Mind Uploading, for a fly at least, is becoming mainstream science

[John Clark]

A fly has been uploaded. That's the takeaway I got after reading an article in yesterday's issue of the journal Nature. Apparently Sebastian Seung, a leader of the project, had a similar thought because he is quoted as saying:

“Mind uploading has been  science fiction, but now mind uploading — for a fly, at least — is becoming mainstream science.”

They put the brain of an adult fly in a bath of liquid plastic which soon hardened into a solid block. Then they sliced the entire brain into 7,050 super thin slices and took 21 million high resolution pictures of it. Then they wrote a computer program that could look at all those pictures and trace which neuron was connected to which; from that they were able to conclude that the fly brain had 139,255 neurons and 50 million connections. Pretty impressive considering that previously the best neuronal map was that of a worm that only had 385 neurons, but that's not even the best part. They used the information about how those 139,255 neurons were wired up to make a simulated fly brain on a computer, and they obtained typical fly behavior! Sebastian Seung said:

"We show that activation of sugar-sensing or water-sensing gustatory neurons in the computational model accurately predicts neurons that respond to tastes and are required for feeding initiation. In addition, using the model to activate neurons in the feeding region of the Drosophila brain predicts those that elicit motor neuron firing. Our results demonstrate that modelling brain circuits using only synapse-level connectivity and predicted neurotransmitter identity generates experimentally testable hypotheses and can describe complete sensorimotor transformations."

The researchers say their next target is uploading a mouse brain which has about 1000 times more neurons than a fly brain.

A Drosophila computational brain model reveals sensorimotor processing

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

vo3

[Cosmin Visan]

Is becoming mainstream delirium. =)))))))))))))))))))

[Brent Meeker]

I would think the next step would be to upload the simulated neurosphere of a fly, so as to see that its brain can "see" and "react" in a simulated world.  Can an artificial fly be far behind?

Brent

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[Cosmin Visan]

The next step is always to find a girlfriend and enjoy life.

[Brent Meeker]

On 10/4/2024 4:01 AM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> The next step is always to find a girlfriend and enjoy life.

Then I suggest you take the next step and stop trying to be a smart ass
on the everything-list.

Brent

[Cosmin Visan]

I am just smart.

[Brent Meeker]

No girl friend...I'm not surprised.

Brent

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[Cosmin Visan]

Yes, I know you don't have any girlfriend.

[Russell Standish]

Impressive result indeed. I can see this as a logical extension of
work done in the '90s where crayfish brains were plasticised, sliced
then imaged under electron microscopes, giving a 3D dataset of the
brain structure. Nowhere near as detailed as this, though.

Next step is to calculate the complexity of the drosophila brain. I did
that a few years back for the C. Elegans brain - although I doubt my
algorithms will be up to snuff, as they tend to be combinatorially
complex - but who knows, I might get lucky.

Cheers

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[Cosmin Visan]

@Russell. There is no impressive result at all. You don't even know what exactly they did. You just read some hyped news article. Trololol.

[Ulrich Stange]

Cosmin. Calling research by scientists at a number of some of the best universities in the world published in one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed science journals in the world “some hyped news article” is rather peculiar (to be polite). As for “You don't even know what exactly they did.”, the article goes into great detail about what exactly they did. In case you haven’t even read it, it is available here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07763-9

[Ulrich Stange]

No, a fly has not been uploaded. A numerical model of a fly’s brain has been generated that allows experimentation to some extent to investigate how a flies brain works. It is an imperfect first prototype, a flawed generic model. Uploading means replicating a particular brain exactly. They are a long way from that. To upload a fly’s brain they would have to first work out the substantial imperfections of the model which the article discusses at length. Then they would have to first measure and then replicate the exact weights for all the connections. That said, they are getting closer.

On Monday, October 14, 2024 at 11:55:58 PM UTC-7 Cosmin Visan wrote:

[Cosmin Visan]

@Ulrich. Brain doesn't exist. "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness. There are no such things as "best universities". They are all religions. And religions have 0 value. Trying to replicate "the brain" is like trying to replicate a shadow and then wondering why it doesn't work like in reality. Because what animates the shadow comes from outside the shadow.

[Ulrich Stange]

>>>Brain doesn't exist. "Brain" is just an idea in consciousness.

Consciousness tries to make sense of our experiences. Our experience is that consciousness runs on a substrate we call “brain”. As model of what we experience it is indeed an idea that exists in consciousness. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Ideas can exist and can be about things that exist.

>>>There are no such things as "best universities". They are all religions.

That’s the old and long debunked “science is just another religion” fallacy.

>>>And religions have 0 value.

That depends on your perspective. What you call value. Values are always personal.

>>>Trying to replicate "the brain" is like trying to replicate a shadow and then wondering why it doesn't work like in reality.

Well, sort of. Numerical models are never replicas. And they can never fully simulate what they are model of because there are always random events in play (e.g. at the quantum mechanical level) that can by their very nature not be replicated. That’s why true “uploading” can never be achieved.

>>>Because what animates the shadow comes from outside the shadow.

That’s if you consider a shadow as animated (as opposed to a succession of shadows that that create the illusion of animation). In any case, that analogy only works as long as there is an outside (e.g. it works within the universe, but it doesn’t apply to the universe at large.)

[Cosmin Visan]

@Ulrich. Who lied to you that consciousness runs on a substrate called "brain" ? Those churches called "universities" ?

[Liz R]

This appears to be a step towards Bruno's ideas about digitising consciousness. Can we make two copies and check with the fly which one it thinks it is?

[Cosmin Visan]

We can even make Santa Claus. Everything is possible! Just ask the Universe and It will give you!