8 ms·

The old neuroscience saying goes like this: "Human brain have billions of neurons and so it is too complex to understand, that's why neuroscience study simpler

by dvh 4y ago

The old neuroscience saying goes like this: "Human brain have billions of neurons and so it is too complex to understand, that's why neuroscience study simpler organisms. Flatworm's brain have 52 neurons. We have no idea how it works". Did finally something changed in this regard?

rmorey 4y ago
Yes. The C. Elegans brain (~300 neurons) was the first organism to be completely mapped to a connectome (the map of all connections). The first complete connectome of any centralized brain, the fruit fly, is about to be completed by the Flywire project (https://home.flywire.ai/ https://home.flywire.ai/) ~100,000 neurons and ~70,000,000 synapses. We have just a little idea how it works ;)
- mr_toad 4y ago
  A bit of extrapolation might suggested we could map out the connectome of a human brain in 40-50 years. Not that I’d suggest a linear extrapolation from two data points…
  - heavenlyblue 4y ago
    Are you willing to kill as many humans as there were flies killed when doing that?
    - mr_toad 4y ago
      You’d only need a fraction of the 100 million+ people who die every year. There are probably bigger ethical questions when it comes to simulating a human mind.
babblingfish 4y ago
There have been projects to systematically catalog all the synapses in the flatworm. The problem is that neural plasticity means these connections change dynamically over time based on the needs of the organism. Since the only way we can study the flatworm at the synapse level is by killing the worm and mounting it on slides and staining it and viewing it through a high power microscope, we can only analyze its structure at points frozen in time (and formaldehyde). The reason we will never be able to truly model and understand neural networks (irl) is because their plasticity is very difficult to study with our current methods. Not only do the quantity and location of the synapses change, but the concentration and type of neurotransmitters at the synapses change. And on top of that the concentration of the neurotransmitter receptors are constantly being up regulated and down regulated by the receiving neuron. Each of these factors is really important to what the neuron is actually doing. This is why even a simple organism can have basically an unlimited amount of complexity. To understand a dynamic system like this would require very precise measurements of very small particles in vivo which is currently impossible with our tools.
- heavenlyblue 4y ago
  > This is why even a simple organism can have basically an unlimited amount of complexity. To understand a dynamic system like this would require very precise measurements of very small particles in vivo which is currently impossible with our tools. Even a computer has an unlimited amount of complexity (2 pow GIGABYTES_OF_RAM possible memory states), yet we have abstracted it into an abstract machine that is well understood.
fettnerd227 4y ago
Not really.
DiscourseFan 4y ago
Many in the SciTech world who would shrink at even the thought of legitimizing Psychoanalysis should know that Freud only developed his psychological theory after trying and failing to create an entirely physical explanation for cognitive processes (Cf. "Project for a Scientific Psychology", Standard Edition I, pg.283). The entire field of Psychology would not exist if not for this failure, a failure which is also an admittance that something as dynamic as the internal processes of the mind can in the first place only be understood in a social context, and that socio-psychological context is always in a constant flux. So the first thing to analyze, then, is what social processes, unique among humans, lead to the development of the psyche? Clear as light in day, the first word ever spoken by every person on this planet is a simple bilabial plosive repeated with an open-back vowel, "mama", or any of the many other similar words which all are formed in the same way and all for the same reason, its the only word a baby can articulate, and the first thing a baby learns is that when it speaks this word, milk and comfort arrive. So for Freud, everything goes back to the mother. The further one gets from that original source of comfort, the more complex means they employ to try and return, ceaselessly failing, always repeating the same thing over and over again. This is the origin of all language, all logic, and all of human society for Freud. Certainly, people still feel the need to see a therapist, and yet there is some hope among people who work in AI that following along the path we have been, one day the AI and Neural-Networks will somehow "match" human intelligence, when humans were never truly intelligent in the first place and always have had to employ some means of artifice for productive labor and the transmission of knowledge. No true advances will be made until we recognize that AI is an outgrowth of human logic and human social labor, which, at the moment, somehow seems as though it will dominate us, even though it is our own creation.
- drdeca 4y ago
  First words aren't always interpreted as referring to the mother. > The further one gets from that original source of comfort, the more complex means they employ to try and return, ceaselessly failing, always repeating the same thing over and over again. This is the origin of all language, all logic, and all of human society for Freud. Dubious. What of the people whose mother died during childbirth? It does not seem as though they are fundamentally different from everyone else. I don't think Freud has anything to contribute to, much of anything, anymore.

by dvh 4y ago

rmorey 4y ago

Yes. The C. Elegans brain (~300 neurons) was the first organism to be completely mapped to a connectome (the map of all connections). The first complete connectome of any centralized brain, the fruit fly, is about to be completed by the Flywire project (https://home.flywire.ai/ https://home.flywire.ai/) ~100,000 neurons and ~70,000,000 synapses. We have just a little idea how it works ;)

mr_toad 4y ago
A bit of extrapolation might suggested we could map out the connectome of a human brain in 40-50 years. Not that I’d suggest a linear extrapolation from two data points…
- heavenlyblue 4y ago
  Are you willing to kill as many humans as there were flies killed when doing that?
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    You’d only need a fraction of the 100 million+ people who die every year. There are probably bigger ethical questions when it comes to simulating a human mind.

babblingfish 4y ago

There have been projects to systematically catalog all the synapses in the flatworm. The problem is that neural plasticity means these connections change dynamically over time based on the needs of the organism. Since the only way we can study the flatworm at the synapse level is by killing the worm and mounting it on slides and staining it and viewing it through a high power microscope, we can only analyze its structure at points frozen in time (and formaldehyde). The reason we will never be able to truly model and understand neural networks (irl) is because their plasticity is very difficult to study with our current methods. Not only do the quantity and location of the synapses change, but the concentration and type of neurotransmitters at the synapses change. And on top of that the concentration of the neurotransmitter receptors are constantly being up regulated and down regulated by the receiving neuron. Each of these factors is really important to what the neuron is actually doing. This is why even a simple organism can have basically an unlimited amount of complexity. To understand a dynamic system like this would require very precise measurements of very small particles in vivo which is currently impossible with our tools.

heavenlyblue 4y ago
> This is why even a simple organism can have basically an unlimited amount of complexity. To understand a dynamic system like this would require very precise measurements of very small particles in vivo which is currently impossible with our tools. Even a computer has an unlimited amount of complexity (2 pow GIGABYTES_OF_RAM possible memory states), yet we have abstracted it into an abstract machine that is well understood.

fettnerd227 4y ago

Not really.

DiscourseFan 4y ago

Many in the SciTech world who would shrink at even the thought of legitimizing Psychoanalysis should know that Freud only developed his psychological theory after trying and failing to create an entirely physical explanation for cognitive processes (Cf. "Project for a Scientific Psychology", Standard Edition I, pg.283). The entire field of Psychology would not exist if not for this failure, a failure which is also an admittance that something as dynamic as the internal processes of the mind can in the first place only be understood in a social context, and that socio-psychological context is always in a constant flux. So the first thing to analyze, then, is what social processes, unique among humans, lead to the development of the psyche? Clear as light in day, the first word ever spoken by every person on this planet is a simple bilabial plosive repeated with an open-back vowel, "mama", or any of the many other similar words which all are formed in the same way and all for the same reason, its the only word a baby can articulate, and the first thing a baby learns is that when it speaks this word, milk and comfort arrive. So for Freud, everything goes back to the mother. The further one gets from that original source of comfort, the more complex means they employ to try and return, ceaselessly failing, always repeating the same thing over and over again. This is the origin of all language, all logic, and all of human society for Freud. Certainly, people still feel the need to see a therapist, and yet there is some hope among people who work in AI that following along the path we have been, one day the AI and Neural-Networks will somehow "match" human intelligence, when humans were never truly intelligent in the first place and always have had to employ some means of artifice for productive labor and the transmission of knowledge. No true advances will be made until we recognize that AI is an outgrowth of human logic and human social labor, which, at the moment, somehow seems as though it will dominate us, even though it is our own creation.

drdeca 4y ago
First words aren't always interpreted as referring to the mother. > The further one gets from that original source of comfort, the more complex means they employ to try and return, ceaselessly failing, always repeating the same thing over and over again. This is the origin of all language, all logic, and all of human society for Freud. Dubious. What of the people whose mother died during childbirth? It does not seem as though they are fundamentally different from everyone else. I don't think Freud has anything to contribute to, much of anything, anymore.