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Brain uploading is a misleading description of what nectome is proposing. We don’t know enough about what needs to be preserved yet to accurately save a snapsho

Brain uploading is a misleading description of what nectome is proposing. We don’t know enough about what needs to be preserved yet to accurately save a snapshot of a brain’s “state”. It’s not theoretically impossible, just much further than this company’s marketing implies.

fixermark 9y ago
And given the recent discovery of what some are calling (possibly inaccurately) an entirely new organ in the body resulting from changes in the visualization technologies available (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/health/new-organ-interstitium.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/health/new-organ-intersti...)... I, for one, wouldn't trust that their preservation solution is sufficient for reconstruction of anything even approximating consciousness without a successful bidirectional demonstration. Far too high a risk that what they'd be able to deliver right now is a very smelly paperweight that used to be someone's brain.
- daodedickinson 9y ago
  Not to mention this recent finding: http://archive.is/wykD9 http://archive.is/wykD9 I think they wil lose way too many analog details.
- otakucode 9y ago
  I don't believe we could ever see any kind of system 'approximating consciousness' without a body. Full stop. Dualism is wrong and there is no mind/body split. The full state of the brain, simulated perfectly, would perfectly reproduce the experience of a brain in total sensory deprivation paired with total whole-body paralysis. Even just sensory deprivation alone is enough to cause consciousness to entirely evaporate in moments. Add in whole body paralysis and no, you can never hope to have anything approaching 'consciousness.'
  - ahelwer 9y ago
    If you have the technology to simulate a brain, it seems pretty trivial to simulate a body, environment, and associated sensory inputs as well.
    - fixermark 9y ago
      I'm reminded of the 'hybrot' experiments where rat brain cells in a nutrient solution are allowed to wire up their own neural network on top of electrodes that send and receive data wirelessly from a robot body [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401756/rat-brained-robot/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401756/rat-brained-robot/] The question of doing something similar with a strata running a human brain doesn't seem impossible, just extremely technologically daunting when one considers the sheer number of connections into and out of the physical brain.
      - SomeNeuroGuy 9y ago
        The number of connections is high, but the bandwidth is surprisingly low. Modern edge routers could do it a couple times over.
    - notahacker 9y ago
      Even if the technology to emulate a particular brain based on a preserved copy could exist, it seems to be asking a lot for the engineers to also emulate the specific nervous system that brain has grown to work with without a copy of it...
      - SomeNeuroGuy 9y ago
        Eh, you can guess for a lot of it, and you at least have a map of where all the inputs actually GO. If it synapses in the olfactory bulb, probably don't hook up your simulated eyeball and all that. Brain plasticity can cover some wiring sins - cochlear implants are pretty awful for connecting where they should go, but it's good enough to get some degree of hearing going. Get enough and the simulated patient can help you out telling you if you've got it right or not.
  - MadcapJake 9y ago
    > I don't believe we could ever see any kind of system 'approximating consciousness' without a body. For the sake of argument, I'm assuming you're talking about a physical, tangible body. > Dualism is wrong and there is no mind/body split. Not really seeing any argumentation to back this claim up. Particularly important for a debate that has been ongoing for some centuries now... > The full state of the brain, simulated perfectly, would perfectly reproduce the experience of a brain in total sensory deprivation paired with total whole-body paralysis. This segment of your post makes me wonder if you are fully comprehending the end-game proposed. I don't think it would be unfair to say that anyone dreaming of a future down this path intends for these "brains in vats" to have ways to sense/communicate. > Even just sensory deprivation alone is enough to cause consciousness to entirely evaporate in moments. Add in whole body paralysis and no, you can never hope to have anything approaching 'consciousness.' Here is where I find a particular loss of argumentation. What evidence do you have to support your claim that without sensing things, consciousness disappears? Don't some groups of monks utilize sensory deprivation to attain "higher states of consciousness"? I'm not arguing that they are truly achieving higher states but rather that the technique itself has a connotation of "consciousness-growing" rather than "consciousness-receding".
  - aurellem 9y ago
    It's important to understand first of all that Nectome is not currently preserving brains in a clinical setting. We are still very firmly in the research phase of building a brain banking technique sufficiently powerful to preserve memories. (see https://nectome.com https://nectome.com for more details). However, I envision that a validated preservation technique would preserve the entire body, including the peripheral nervous system.
- currymj 9y ago
  yeah, the idea here is that it might be sufficient, much like cryogenics. their marketing is probably irresponsible, depending on your perspective, but then again you're dead anyway so any shot at a future may be worth it. unlike cryogenics it will definitely result in a lot of useful and interesting data about the brain, whether it works or not.
  - etrautmann 9y ago
    Undoubtedly true, though good luck passing this by an IRB. The goals of preserving brain state at time of death and learning about the brain from a science perspective are not fully aligned. There's a dot product there, but enough orthogonality that it's duplicitous to sell people a brain preservation service if the true goal is science.
aurellem 9y ago
We’re proud of the progress we’ve made so far—demonstrating that the ultrastructure (connectome) is preserved. The connectome is a necessary starting point upon which models of the brain can be built [0]. We intend to continue researching and validating preservation of important biomolecules as we explore the efficacy limits of ASC. We intend to develop these tools on a timeline to allow proper feedback from the neuroscience community. I certainly don’t want our marketing to imply that we have near-term or even specific plans to offer anything commercially for clinical use, so I will read through our website again and try to find areas where one can get the wrong idea. [0] From https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/c-elegans-connectome/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/c-elegans-connect...: “Some people say we don't know anything about how C. elegans's brain works and I am like, 'Yes, we do!'" says Cornelia Bargmann of The Rockefeller University, who has studied the nematode for more than two decades and attended the Columbia debate. "A lot of what we know about C elegans's rapid behaviors we have learned through and with the connectome. Every time we do an experiment, we look at those wiring diagrams and use them as a starting point for generating hypotheses."
- cryoshon 9y ago
  sigh, what about the active patterns, yo. brains aren't static connections of neurons when they're alive. they have hojillions of firing patterns, some of which are cyclical and constant, other of which are transient and tiny. these stop when the brain is dead. you're not gonna capture these from a dead brain. what if there's some essential aspect of consciousness that's depending on circles of five or six neurons holding a pattern of action potentials in perpetuity? i doubt that this is the case, but if it is, cracking the connectome -- which is already an achievement that would require an effort greater than the human genome project -- wouldn't be very helpful at all. oh yeah, and as far as preserving those circuits go, do you have a solution for clearing neurons from excess sodium or potassium after it accumulates there during death? depending on which ion pump fails from lack of energy first (and my bet is that it's the sodium-potassium ion pump, because it's responsible for some absurd percentage of the body's total energy usage), neurons could very easily be left logjammed with a glut of charged particles that prohibits making action potentials in any capacity even when energy becomes available. you don't wanna be assuming that all those excess ions are signal when they're noise. finally: have you considered your philosophical disposition wrt substance dualism or materialism? you're gonna have to have a damn good case for some philosophical angle when dennett comes a knockin or he'll immolate your entire project.

fixermark 9y ago

And given the recent discovery of what some are calling (possibly inaccurately) an entirely new organ in the body resulting from changes in the visualization technologies available (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/health/new-organ-interstitium.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/health/new-organ-intersti...)... I, for one, wouldn't trust that their preservation solution is sufficient for reconstruction of anything even approximating consciousness without a successful bidirectional demonstration. Far too high a risk that what they'd be able to deliver right now is a very smelly paperweight that used to be someone's brain.

daodedickinson 9y ago
Not to mention this recent finding: http://archive.is/wykD9 http://archive.is/wykD9 I think they wil lose way too many analog details.
otakucode 9y ago
I don't believe we could ever see any kind of system 'approximating consciousness' without a body. Full stop. Dualism is wrong and there is no mind/body split. The full state of the brain, simulated perfectly, would perfectly reproduce the experience of a brain in total sensory deprivation paired with total whole-body paralysis. Even just sensory deprivation alone is enough to cause consciousness to entirely evaporate in moments. Add in whole body paralysis and no, you can never hope to have anything approaching 'consciousness.'
- ahelwer 9y ago
  If you have the technology to simulate a brain, it seems pretty trivial to simulate a body, environment, and associated sensory inputs as well.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    I'm reminded of the 'hybrot' experiments where rat brain cells in a nutrient solution are allowed to wire up their own neural network on top of electrodes that send and receive data wirelessly from a robot body [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401756/rat-brained-robot/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401756/rat-brained-robot/] The question of doing something similar with a strata running a human brain doesn't seem impossible, just extremely technologically daunting when one considers the sheer number of connections into and out of the physical brain.
    - SomeNeuroGuy 9y ago
      The number of connections is high, but the bandwidth is surprisingly low. Modern edge routers could do it a couple times over.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    Even if the technology to emulate a particular brain based on a preserved copy could exist, it seems to be asking a lot for the engineers to also emulate the specific nervous system that brain has grown to work with without a copy of it...
    - SomeNeuroGuy 9y ago
      Eh, you can guess for a lot of it, and you at least have a map of where all the inputs actually GO. If it synapses in the olfactory bulb, probably don't hook up your simulated eyeball and all that. Brain plasticity can cover some wiring sins - cochlear implants are pretty awful for connecting where they should go, but it's good enough to get some degree of hearing going. Get enough and the simulated patient can help you out telling you if you've got it right or not.
- MadcapJake 9y ago
  > I don't believe we could ever see any kind of system 'approximating consciousness' without a body. For the sake of argument, I'm assuming you're talking about a physical, tangible body. > Dualism is wrong and there is no mind/body split. Not really seeing any argumentation to back this claim up. Particularly important for a debate that has been ongoing for some centuries now... > The full state of the brain, simulated perfectly, would perfectly reproduce the experience of a brain in total sensory deprivation paired with total whole-body paralysis. This segment of your post makes me wonder if you are fully comprehending the end-game proposed. I don't think it would be unfair to say that anyone dreaming of a future down this path intends for these "brains in vats" to have ways to sense/communicate. > Even just sensory deprivation alone is enough to cause consciousness to entirely evaporate in moments. Add in whole body paralysis and no, you can never hope to have anything approaching 'consciousness.' Here is where I find a particular loss of argumentation. What evidence do you have to support your claim that without sensing things, consciousness disappears? Don't some groups of monks utilize sensory deprivation to attain "higher states of consciousness"? I'm not arguing that they are truly achieving higher states but rather that the technique itself has a connotation of "consciousness-growing" rather than "consciousness-receding".
- aurellem 9y ago
  It's important to understand first of all that Nectome is not currently preserving brains in a clinical setting. We are still very firmly in the research phase of building a brain banking technique sufficiently powerful to preserve memories. (see https://nectome.com https://nectome.com for more details). However, I envision that a validated preservation technique would preserve the entire body, including the peripheral nervous system.
currymj 9y ago
yeah, the idea here is that it might be sufficient, much like cryogenics. their marketing is probably irresponsible, depending on your perspective, but then again you're dead anyway so any shot at a future may be worth it. unlike cryogenics it will definitely result in a lot of useful and interesting data about the brain, whether it works or not.
- etrautmann 9y ago
  Undoubtedly true, though good luck passing this by an IRB. The goals of preserving brain state at time of death and learning about the brain from a science perspective are not fully aligned. There's a dot product there, but enough orthogonality that it's duplicitous to sell people a brain preservation service if the true goal is science.

aurellem 9y ago

We’re proud of the progress we’ve made so far—demonstrating that the ultrastructure (connectome) is preserved. The connectome is a necessary starting point upon which models of the brain can be built [0]. We intend to continue researching and validating preservation of important biomolecules as we explore the efficacy limits of ASC. We intend to develop these tools on a timeline to allow proper feedback from the neuroscience community. I certainly don’t want our marketing to imply that we have near-term or even specific plans to offer anything commercially for clinical use, so I will read through our website again and try to find areas where one can get the wrong idea. [0] From https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/c-elegans-connectome/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/c-elegans-connect...: “Some people say we don't know anything about how C. elegans's brain works and I am like, 'Yes, we do!'" says Cornelia Bargmann of The Rockefeller University, who has studied the nematode for more than two decades and attended the Columbia debate. "A lot of what we know about C elegans's rapid behaviors we have learned through and with the connectome. Every time we do an experiment, we look at those wiring diagrams and use them as a starting point for generating hypotheses."

cryoshon 9y ago
sigh, what about the active patterns, yo. brains aren't static connections of neurons when they're alive. they have hojillions of firing patterns, some of which are cyclical and constant, other of which are transient and tiny. these stop when the brain is dead. you're not gonna capture these from a dead brain. what if there's some essential aspect of consciousness that's depending on circles of five or six neurons holding a pattern of action potentials in perpetuity? i doubt that this is the case, but if it is, cracking the connectome -- which is already an achievement that would require an effort greater than the human genome project -- wouldn't be very helpful at all. oh yeah, and as far as preserving those circuits go, do you have a solution for clearing neurons from excess sodium or potassium after it accumulates there during death? depending on which ion pump fails from lack of energy first (and my bet is that it's the sodium-potassium ion pump, because it's responsible for some absurd percentage of the body's total energy usage), neurons could very easily be left logjammed with a glut of charged particles that prohibits making action potentials in any capacity even when energy becomes available. you don't wanna be assuming that all those excess ions are signal when they're noise. finally: have you considered your philosophical disposition wrt substance dualism or materialism? you're gonna have to have a damn good case for some philosophical angle when dennett comes a knockin or he'll immolate your entire project.