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Let's be honest. The rat is not "enjoying" it. Also I'm in the camp that trying to reverse engineer the brain by studying neural activity is like trying to rev

Let's be honest. The rat is not "enjoying" it. Also I'm in the camp that trying to reverse engineer the brain by studying neural activity is like trying to reverse engineer Angry Birds by studying register activity on an iphone. Nevertheless, very cool visualizations.

closetnerd 12y ago
Quite. The Blue Brain project did a similar thing by mapping all the neurons in the neocortical column of a cat (or rat?) and visualizing the neural activity and it hasn't yielded anything ground breaking. Here's Henry Markram's Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS3wMC2BpxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS3wMC2BpxU. But honestly, its really just something to impress people who don't have any idea of what kind of implications this would have. But I do think that obviously understanding neural activity is important but only if its going to help yield understandings of the basic structural units of the neocortex. Trying to understanding the neural activity of millions upon billions is definitely not going to go anywhere.
- etrautmann 12y ago
  The approach taken by Markram is quite different from what Jeremy is presenting here. Markram is attempting to simulate large systems, and this work is controversial, largely because many people don't think we understand neural systems well enough to model them with appropriate fidelity at that scale. The work presented here represents a new take on a more classically accepted approach. Record an animal's behavior as well as the neural activity, and attempt to understand how neural activity controls the observed behaviors. The difference here is a dramatic increase in scale and computational capability by recording the entire brain of a zebrafish at once, and being able to run analyses in a few seconds instead of hours, which has real implications for experimental neuroscientists.
  - closetnerd 12y ago
    You're right, I made a mistake in implying that the "Markram did a similar thing...". Specifically I'm criticizing trying to analyze the neural activity of entire brain regions. Neural simulation or actually trying to record neural activity wasn't really my point. I assume both currently have drawbacks weather its "not having accurate enough neural models for simulations" or "not sufficiently or accurately being able to record neural activity". Yes being able to run analysis in a few seconds instead of hours has real implications for experimental analysis but again the benefits of the technology were never under my criticism or skepticism. I suppose what I'm specifically alluding to is my criticism of trying to do such large scale analysis of neural activity itself given how little we know about what we should be trying to look for at such a scale. I say "we" but I should clarify I'm no neuroscientist.

closetnerd 12y ago

Quite. The Blue Brain project did a similar thing by mapping all the neurons in the neocortical column of a cat (or rat?) and visualizing the neural activity and it hasn't yielded anything ground breaking. Here's Henry Markram's Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS3wMC2BpxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS3wMC2BpxU. But honestly, its really just something to impress people who don't have any idea of what kind of implications this would have. But I do think that obviously understanding neural activity is important but only if its going to help yield understandings of the basic structural units of the neocortex. Trying to understanding the neural activity of millions upon billions is definitely not going to go anywhere.

etrautmann 12y ago
The approach taken by Markram is quite different from what Jeremy is presenting here. Markram is attempting to simulate large systems, and this work is controversial, largely because many people don't think we understand neural systems well enough to model them with appropriate fidelity at that scale. The work presented here represents a new take on a more classically accepted approach. Record an animal's behavior as well as the neural activity, and attempt to understand how neural activity controls the observed behaviors. The difference here is a dramatic increase in scale and computational capability by recording the entire brain of a zebrafish at once, and being able to run analyses in a few seconds instead of hours, which has real implications for experimental neuroscientists.
- closetnerd 12y ago
  You're right, I made a mistake in implying that the "Markram did a similar thing...". Specifically I'm criticizing trying to analyze the neural activity of entire brain regions. Neural simulation or actually trying to record neural activity wasn't really my point. I assume both currently have drawbacks weather its "not having accurate enough neural models for simulations" or "not sufficiently or accurately being able to record neural activity". Yes being able to run analysis in a few seconds instead of hours has real implications for experimental analysis but again the benefits of the technology were never under my criticism or skepticism. I suppose what I'm specifically alluding to is my criticism of trying to do such large scale analysis of neural activity itself given how little we know about what we should be trying to look for at such a scale. I say "we" but I should clarify I'm no neuroscientist.