5 ms·

Artificial and biological neurons communicate over the internet 2020 [pdf]

50 points by sturza 7y ago

toxik 7y ago
This article does not mention the Internet once. The actual paper title is: Memristive synapses connect brain and silicon spiking neurons
- sturza 7y ago
  It’s mentioned a couple of times. Here’s one: Secondly, the experiment shows successful synaptor operation over the internet and not only by wire connection.
  - toxik 7y ago
    You're right, I scrolled through and then did a word search. Must've made a typo. Anyhow, the title is not what the submission title is.
- ByThyGrace 7y ago
  > Artificial and biological neurons communicate over the internet When I read the title I thought it was a metaphor for people using chatbots...
yayr 7y ago
What are good ressources / frameworks to simulate spiking neural nets on regular computing hardware? How would a backpropagation work in such an architecture?
- haffi112 7y ago
  Here is one simulator you can use: https://briansimulator.org/ https://briansimulator.org/ Generally it is not known to my best knowledge how or whether the brain uses backpropagation (knowing that would be a huge result). However, several papers have been written on that topic with varying approaches. I encourage you to do a literature search if you want to dig deeper. On this topic it is worth mentioning that it is not even known why the brain uses discrete signals (spikes) for communication.
- Tenoke 7y ago
  >How would a backpropagation work in such an architecture? In the simplest case you can feed signals 'in one end', let it do it's thing and then take the output, which you further feed through the rest of your architecture. Rewarding can be (in the simplest case) done with neurotransmitters (mostly dopamine) as it would've worked normally. You basically have to mimic something like this[0], by rewarding based on your loss function. (of course, in reality, you'll have to do a lot more than that) 0. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Reward_signals http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Reward_signals
Tenoke 7y ago
I've been waiting for progress in this direction for a while, and this paper seems to follow naturally from what many were expecting. I'm more excited about adding more neuroplasticity, brainpower, and easier interfacing to humans, but if you can also make it so I can train NNs on rat brainware I'll be pretty happy, too. This further opens the path to both.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
est31 7y ago
Important quote: > Achieving this [communication over the Internet] is not trivial, since issues such as handling UDP propagation delays (which are typically variable and thus difficult to control) need to be resolved.
mattkrause 7y ago
The internet part is cutesy[0], but it's by far the least interesting part of the article: of course you can send data via the internet. Can we change the post's title to the actual title of the article: Memristive synapses connect brain and silicon spiking neurons? [0] I really dislike it when people try to punch up their brain-computer interface papers by adding an "internet" component to it. Unless it's somehow latency-sensitive, the internet part adds nothing over local control and is just pure clickbait. Please don't do this. If I review your paper, I will point this out, loudly, to the editor.
- sturza 7y ago
  It is latency sensitive as the transmission protocol might substract from the usefullness. But this serves for future optimization. The title was not taken from the paper but from the nature article where the paper was initially cited.
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    It's bizarre though, because the latency problem is self-inflicted. If you were going to build a brain-computer interface, why on earth would you scatter parts of it across three different countries like this? It's not exploiting a vast data center or anything, just a VLSI chip that happens to be far away. If you did have to do that, why wouldn't you directly connect all three centers instead of having a Python script(?) in the middle handing off information. The membrane time constant of a biological neuron is also about 30 ms, which gives you a fair amount of wiggle room even in the face of lag. Their solution seems clever, but other than a vague mention of "IoT brain implants" (please god, no), I don't see what problem it really solves.
    - inetknght 7y ago
      I think there's value in measuring effectiveness of intelligence algorithms with different latencies.
      - mattkrause 7y ago

50 points by sturza 7y ago

This article does not mention the Internet once. The actual paper title is: Memristive synapses connect brain and silicon spiking neurons

sturza 7y ago
It’s mentioned a couple of times. Here’s one: Secondly, the experiment shows successful synaptor operation over the internet and not only by wire connection.
- toxik 7y ago
  You're right, I scrolled through and then did a word search. Must've made a typo. Anyhow, the title is not what the submission title is.
ByThyGrace 7y ago
> Artificial and biological neurons communicate over the internet When I read the title I thought it was a metaphor for people using chatbots...

yayr 7y ago

What are good ressources / frameworks to simulate spiking neural nets on regular computing hardware? How would a backpropagation work in such an architecture?

haffi112 7y ago
Here is one simulator you can use: https://briansimulator.org/ https://briansimulator.org/ Generally it is not known to my best knowledge how or whether the brain uses backpropagation (knowing that would be a huge result). However, several papers have been written on that topic with varying approaches. I encourage you to do a literature search if you want to dig deeper. On this topic it is worth mentioning that it is not even known why the brain uses discrete signals (spikes) for communication.
Tenoke 7y ago
>How would a backpropagation work in such an architecture? In the simplest case you can feed signals 'in one end', let it do it's thing and then take the output, which you further feed through the rest of your architecture. Rewarding can be (in the simplest case) done with neurotransmitters (mostly dopamine) as it would've worked normally. You basically have to mimic something like this[0], by rewarding based on your loss function. (of course, in reality, you'll have to do a lot more than that) 0. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Reward_signals http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Reward_signals

Tenoke 7y ago

I've been waiting for progress in this direction for a while, and this paper seems to follow naturally from what many were expecting. I'm more excited about adding more neuroplasticity, brainpower, and easier interfacing to humans, but if you can also make it so I can train NNs on rat brainware I'll be pretty happy, too. This further opens the path to both.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

est31 7y ago

Important quote: > Achieving this [communication over the Internet] is not trivial, since issues such as handling UDP propagation delays (which are typically variable and thus difficult to control) need to be resolved.

mattkrause 7y ago

The internet part is cutesy[0], but it's by far the least interesting part of the article: of course you can send data via the internet. Can we change the post's title to the actual title of the article: Memristive synapses connect brain and silicon spiking neurons? [0] I really dislike it when people try to punch up their brain-computer interface papers by adding an "internet" component to it. Unless it's somehow latency-sensitive, the internet part adds nothing over local control and is just pure clickbait. Please don't do this. If I review your paper, I will point this out, loudly, to the editor.

sturza 7y ago
It is latency sensitive as the transmission protocol might substract from the usefullness. But this serves for future optimization. The title was not taken from the paper but from the nature article where the paper was initially cited.
- mattkrause 7y ago
  It's bizarre though, because the latency problem is self-inflicted. If you were going to build a brain-computer interface, why on earth would you scatter parts of it across three different countries like this? It's not exploiting a vast data center or anything, just a VLSI chip that happens to be far away. If you did have to do that, why wouldn't you directly connect all three centers instead of having a Python script(?) in the middle handing off information. The membrane time constant of a biological neuron is also about 30 ms, which gives you a fair amount of wiggle room even in the face of lag. Their solution seems clever, but other than a vague mention of "IoT brain implants" (please god, no), I don't see what problem it really solves.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    I think there's value in measuring effectiveness of intelligence algorithms with different latencies.
    - mattkrause 7y ago