6 ms·

Flies possess more sophisticated cognitive abilities than previously known

59 points by NotAWorkNick 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sethammons 5y ago
> To arrive at the heart of their new findings the researchers created an immersive virtual reality environment to test the fly’s behavior via visual stimulation and coupled the displayed imagery with an infra-red laser as an averse heat stimulus. The near 360-degree panoramic arena allowed Drosophila to flap their wings freely while remaining tethered, and with the virtual reality constantly updating based on their wing movement (analyzed in real-time using high-speed machine-vision cameras) it gave the flies the illusion of flying freely in the world. This gave researchers the ability to train and test flies for conditioning tasks by allowing the insect to orient away from an image associated with the negative heat stimulus and towards a second image not associated with heat. That's wild!
- afarviral 5y ago
  This is seriously beyond what I would hace thought feasible. Literally a virtual reality rig for flies that tracks their wing movement to guide virtual movement? And yet we barely have a similar set up for human locomotion? What gjves?
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    Compared with humans, flies don't have many processing neurons between their effectors (wings) and their eyes. It's why they can take off so quickly when you try to swat them. Their simple but effective processing allows them to be more easily manipulated then humans. Also, the flies aren't going to say "Meh this VR has fallen into the uncanny valley" or similar.
    - technothrasher 5y ago
      > It's why they can take off so quickly when you try to swat them. It's also why defeating them is simple. They fly up and away from whatever is coming at them. But if you come at them on at least two sides, they simply fly up. If you sweep your hands toward them and then move up as you bring your hands together, you'll nail the fly almost every time.
      - mimentum 5y ago
        This guy SWATs
      - 14 5y ago
        They became easy to kill and fun after I got a bug-a-salt rifle. It is a salt gun for shooting flies and works quite well and is very entertaining at the same time. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTVn6OhATaI&feature=emb_title https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTVn6OhATaI&feature=emb_title
      - silicon2401 5y ago
        that's pretty genius. do you have a similar trick for getting over the revulsion at the thought of touching a fly?
        throwanem 5y ago
        Wash your hands thoroughly after? Works for me, although I'll still grab a rolled-up newspaper first if there's time.
        T-A 5y ago
        Gloves?
        silicon2401 5y ago
        That's a valid suggestion, but unfortunately wouldn't hide the substance. I think I have separate revulsion to insect contact and insect weight/mass. I'd prefer certain bugs to not touch me (e.g. ladybugs are fine), but I _really_ would prefer them to feel weightless. Something about a bug's weight being perceptible is intensely revolting to me, as if they're meant to be weightless wisps
  - onedognight 5y ago
    The new part here is not the fly glued into a VR rig. Researchers have been doing the VR fly thing for well over a decade! Dickenson was doing this at Caltech at least in 2008. https://authors.library.caltech.edu/90960/ https://authors.library.caltech.edu/90960/
- joshiefishbein 5y ago
  Welcome to the Metabzzzz
villmann 5y ago
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like banana!
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  Time has plenty to do with it. > more sophisticated cognitive abilities than previously known No. More sophisticated cognitive abilities than previously modelled using atemporal neural nets. Anyone who has spent an afternoon being outwitted by a fly in their study knows that even a common housefly can be cunning beyond belief. It's not just that their reaction times out-pace humans. They seem to remember, anticipate, plan and even deceive. Those faculties seem inexplicable by a bottom-up network of 100,000 neurons using naive connectionist models we currently understand in artificial networks. That's because time is missing from the models. Biological networks are spiking, and (last I researched it) can operate at up to 1kHz, and using integration, differentiation and non-linear feedback can work like analogue computers (Hodgkin and Izhikevich models). Instead of sending simple activation thresholds around the network that's like sending network packets that can perform remote procedure calls. And yes, they love bananas.
air7 5y ago
This honestly feels like a landmark study. Both in terms of the jaw-dropping technical setup (full VR rig AND real-time brain imaging for untethered flies), and the results (proof of otherwise unknowable cognitive abilities) with interesting philosophical implications about the differentiation we humans perform when categorizing animals (for example, is killing a fly morally different than killing a horse/cow?)
- treeman79 5y ago
  Yes it’s different. Source. I asked Steve the cow.
  - whoomp12342 5y ago
    clearly you have to ask a fly or else you risk a serious bias
    - treeman79 5y ago
      Fly was too buzzed to give coherent answer.
kryptiskt 5y ago
I wish they were as smart as wasps and could figure out the difference between an open and a closed window.
- imtringued 5y ago
  I have witnessed countless of wasp die because they don't know how to go through an open window it's such an ordeal to catch the damn things and get them out that I stopped bothering.
  - hungryforcodes 5y ago
    To be fair - birds have this problem too and even humans bump into closed balcony doors. Its more about glass being transparent and all than intelligence I would imagine.
    - l33tman 5y ago
      If you walk into a balcony door you won't do it a thousand times more...
      - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
        That's the great thing about being human. We never ever keep misreading situations and making the same mistakes over and over.
      - hungryforcodes 5y ago
        I've been to quite a few drunken BBQs where it has happened for some of the guests. :p
        treeman79 5y ago
        https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/apple-park-workers-hurt-glass-walls-norman-foster-steve-jobs https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/apple-par...
MrYellowP 5y ago
I ... I just don't know. We put a fly into virtual reality. A fly. Can we appreciate the fact that humanity has come to a point where dystopian shit like this has become the norm? Oh but of course we can! We do! But should we really? I mean, come on. This is nuts. There's already farmers putting VR goggles onto cows. Because they give better milk. It's progress alright, but it's nuts. Completely bonkers, if you ask my british personality fragment. It really isn't that far from putting VR onto everything and everyone simply because people have stopped appreciating actual reality, with actual nature. A fly! In virtual reality! It's unironically amazing! We're fucked. Seriously. lol
- echelon 5y ago
  Forgive me, but this is totally the wrong take. This research is being done to understand cognition. To connect to the biochemistry and biophysics. To improve our models and begin making bigger leaps. Even simple systems like drosophila are wildly complicated. A hundred years of this type of investigation and maybe one day we'll be able to record memories. Transfer consciousness. End death. This isn't just "fly VR". This is the curiosity of being human. And yet another slow, methodical step towards solving it all.
  - throwanem 5y ago
    Humans able to manipulate consciousness the way we do matter and information? Now there's a dystopian take for you...
    - echelon 5y ago
      Willing acceptance of our eventual fate of turning into ash while being born in a generation that has all the capacity for increasing lifespan is what's dystopian. Thinking intelligent life should continue in its current state of being mostly meat flesh bags until the sun boils our ancestors is dystopian. Status quo, not trying to be special, not trying to reach for the stars with our limited time. That's not just dystopian, it's Kafkaesque. We may as well be in cockroach bodies waiting for the universe to crush us, because thats what not looking up from the dirt gets us. Curiosity, wonder, and unbounded dreams are among the best qualities of human life. They transcend our weak and dying bodies and our mortal lifetimes.
gchokov 5y ago
In the end, it will turn out that every single living being has some level of consciousness, and self-awareness...

59 points by NotAWorkNick 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

> To arrive at the heart of their new findings the researchers created an immersive virtual reality environment to test the fly’s behavior via visual stimulation and coupled the displayed imagery with an infra-red laser as an averse heat stimulus. The near 360-degree panoramic arena allowed Drosophila to flap their wings freely while remaining tethered, and with the virtual reality constantly updating based on their wing movement (analyzed in real-time using high-speed machine-vision cameras) it gave the flies the illusion of flying freely in the world. This gave researchers the ability to train and test flies for conditioning tasks by allowing the insect to orient away from an image associated with the negative heat stimulus and towards a second image not associated with heat. That's wild!

afarviral 5y ago
This is seriously beyond what I would hace thought feasible. Literally a virtual reality rig for flies that tracks their wing movement to guide virtual movement? And yet we barely have a similar set up for human locomotion? What gjves?
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  Compared with humans, flies don't have many processing neurons between their effectors (wings) and their eyes. It's why they can take off so quickly when you try to swat them. Their simple but effective processing allows them to be more easily manipulated then humans. Also, the flies aren't going to say "Meh this VR has fallen into the uncanny valley" or similar.
  - technothrasher 5y ago
    > It's why they can take off so quickly when you try to swat them. It's also why defeating them is simple. They fly up and away from whatever is coming at them. But if you come at them on at least two sides, they simply fly up. If you sweep your hands toward them and then move up as you bring your hands together, you'll nail the fly almost every time.
    - mimentum 5y ago
      This guy SWATs
    - 14 5y ago
      They became easy to kill and fun after I got a bug-a-salt rifle. It is a salt gun for shooting flies and works quite well and is very entertaining at the same time. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTVn6OhATaI&feature=emb_title https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTVn6OhATaI&feature=emb_title
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      that's pretty genius. do you have a similar trick for getting over the revulsion at the thought of touching a fly?
      - throwanem 5y ago
        Wash your hands thoroughly after? Works for me, although I'll still grab a rolled-up newspaper first if there's time.
      - T-A 5y ago
        Gloves?
        silicon2401 5y ago
        That's a valid suggestion, but unfortunately wouldn't hide the substance. I think I have separate revulsion to insect contact and insect weight/mass. I'd prefer certain bugs to not touch me (e.g. ladybugs are fine), but I _really_ would prefer them to feel weightless. Something about a bug's weight being perceptible is intensely revolting to me, as if they're meant to be weightless wisps
- onedognight 5y ago
  The new part here is not the fly glued into a VR rig. Researchers have been doing the VR fly thing for well over a decade! Dickenson was doing this at Caltech at least in 2008. https://authors.library.caltech.edu/90960/ https://authors.library.caltech.edu/90960/
joshiefishbein 5y ago
Welcome to the Metabzzzz

villmann 5y ago

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like banana!

nonrandomstring 5y ago
Time has plenty to do with it. > more sophisticated cognitive abilities than previously known No. More sophisticated cognitive abilities than previously modelled using atemporal neural nets. Anyone who has spent an afternoon being outwitted by a fly in their study knows that even a common housefly can be cunning beyond belief. It's not just that their reaction times out-pace humans. They seem to remember, anticipate, plan and even deceive. Those faculties seem inexplicable by a bottom-up network of 100,000 neurons using naive connectionist models we currently understand in artificial networks. That's because time is missing from the models. Biological networks are spiking, and (last I researched it) can operate at up to 1kHz, and using integration, differentiation and non-linear feedback can work like analogue computers (Hodgkin and Izhikevich models). Instead of sending simple activation thresholds around the network that's like sending network packets that can perform remote procedure calls. And yes, they love bananas.

air7 5y ago

This honestly feels like a landmark study. Both in terms of the jaw-dropping technical setup (full VR rig AND real-time brain imaging for untethered flies), and the results (proof of otherwise unknowable cognitive abilities) with interesting philosophical implications about the differentiation we humans perform when categorizing animals (for example, is killing a fly morally different than killing a horse/cow?)

treeman79 5y ago
Yes it’s different. Source. I asked Steve the cow.
- whoomp12342 5y ago
  clearly you have to ask a fly or else you risk a serious bias
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Fly was too buzzed to give coherent answer.

kryptiskt 5y ago

I wish they were as smart as wasps and could figure out the difference between an open and a closed window.

imtringued 5y ago
I have witnessed countless of wasp die because they don't know how to go through an open window it's such an ordeal to catch the damn things and get them out that I stopped bothering.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  To be fair - birds have this problem too and even humans bump into closed balcony doors. Its more about glass being transparent and all than intelligence I would imagine.
  - l33tman 5y ago
    If you walk into a balcony door you won't do it a thousand times more...
    - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
      That's the great thing about being human. We never ever keep misreading situations and making the same mistakes over and over.
    - hungryforcodes 5y ago
      I've been to quite a few drunken BBQs where it has happened for some of the guests. :p
      - treeman79 5y ago
        https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/apple-park-workers-hurt-glass-walls-norman-foster-steve-jobs https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/apple-par...

MrYellowP 5y ago

I ... I just don't know. We put a fly into virtual reality. A fly. Can we appreciate the fact that humanity has come to a point where dystopian shit like this has become the norm? Oh but of course we can! We do! But should we really? I mean, come on. This is nuts. There's already farmers putting VR goggles onto cows. Because they give better milk. It's progress alright, but it's nuts. Completely bonkers, if you ask my british personality fragment. It really isn't that far from putting VR onto everything and everyone simply because people have stopped appreciating actual reality, with actual nature. A fly! In virtual reality! It's unironically amazing! We're fucked. Seriously. lol

echelon 5y ago
Forgive me, but this is totally the wrong take. This research is being done to understand cognition. To connect to the biochemistry and biophysics. To improve our models and begin making bigger leaps. Even simple systems like drosophila are wildly complicated. A hundred years of this type of investigation and maybe one day we'll be able to record memories. Transfer consciousness. End death. This isn't just "fly VR". This is the curiosity of being human. And yet another slow, methodical step towards solving it all.
- throwanem 5y ago
  Humans able to manipulate consciousness the way we do matter and information? Now there's a dystopian take for you...
  - echelon 5y ago
    Willing acceptance of our eventual fate of turning into ash while being born in a generation that has all the capacity for increasing lifespan is what's dystopian. Thinking intelligent life should continue in its current state of being mostly meat flesh bags until the sun boils our ancestors is dystopian. Status quo, not trying to be special, not trying to reach for the stars with our limited time. That's not just dystopian, it's Kafkaesque. We may as well be in cockroach bodies waiting for the universe to crush us, because thats what not looking up from the dirt gets us. Curiosity, wonder, and unbounded dreams are among the best qualities of human life. They transcend our weak and dying bodies and our mortal lifetimes.

gchokov 5y ago

In the end, it will turn out that every single living being has some level of consciousness, and self-awareness...