We are working to make EyeWire even more fun, in the hope of recruiting a large community of "citizen scientists." If each member of the community plays the coloring game a little, we can collectively map the retinal connectome. Community input to the site will also make the AI smarter, because the computer learns to emulate human judgments. This will accelerate the coloring process still further, until we will be ready to search for connectopathies. Philosophers love to ponder the question of whether the brain is complex enough to understand itself. Perhaps not, but maybe our billions of brains interacting with AI will be up to the task!
Cook: What made you think to turn to citizen science? Is it just a form of outreach, or do you really think it will end up having a significant impact on neuroscience?
Seung: We were impressed by the success of Galaxy Zoo in astronomy and FoldIt in molecular biology. Already a few years ago, we were thinking of creating EyeWire, but the required technologies were not yet available or widespread. When delivering 3D images to users, EyeWire works nicely with a 10 Mbps internet connection, a speed that has become common in households only recently. And EyeWire's interactive 3D graphics, rare for a web application, was implemented using WebGL. This standard is so new that it requires recent graphics hardware, can be tricky to configure in some older web browsers, and is unsupported by Internet Explorer. We hope that our users will understand that such annoyances come along with being an early adopter, but should disappear as the technologies mature.
EyeWire really excites me because of its potential for combining research, education, and outreach in a truly synergistic way. These activities are generally viewed as separate, and may even be seen as interfering with each other. Researchers may wish to spend more time on education and outreach, yet end up not doing so because they have to focus on research to remain competitive in their specialty. Likewise, educators may be too busy with teaching to do research. But EyeWire creates a situation in which important research goals hinge on the participation of citizen scientists. And learning science by actually doing science may turn out to be more effective than traditional educational methods, or at least complement them nicely.
Cook: Whether the public is helping or not, mapping the connectome will only provide the structure of the neural network, not the signals that the neurons are actually sending. Aren't you just setting yourself up for another, even more daunting project?
Seung: Using new methods of light microscopy, neurophysiologists are now able to image the signals of hundreds or even thousands of individual neurons at the same time, in the brains of living animals. (Compared to microscopy, MRI has the advantage of being applicable to living human brains but blurs 100,000 neurons into a single pixel.) Such studies of neural activity can be followed by electron microscopy to map the connections of the same neurons. Imagine knowing the activity and connectivity of all the neurons in a small chunk of brain. This capability is finally within reach, and is bound to revolutionize neuroscience.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.
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9 Comments
Add CommentThe "Connectome" - why that reminds me of the genome! I wonder if it's intended to also remind potential investors and institutions awarding research grants that this is just just like the recently successful mapping of the genome? In product marketing, a catchy name is invaluable...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe attempt to draw the human brain's "Connectome", is a highly valuable idea, that may produce great advances in apparently non-connected sciences, such as computer and microchip construction, finally, neurons are somehow like transistors, dendrites - collecting or way-in sprouts -, soma -body -, and axons - emitting or way-out sprouts - can be regarded as the collector, base and emisor of a transistor, and many times the modulation of neuronal activity is linked to its rate of firing. The word "Connectome" reminds me the "Kinome" used to describe the connections and interactions of different pathways that regulate the cell cycle, and are today the object of "Targeted therapies" for malignancies. The Kinome image is so complex, and so is the possible number of interactions and variants in the pathways,(Finally, many cancer cells find a way to overcome the drugged pathway, and continue growing and replicating), that it seems to me close to the "Gorgona's head", a mythical being whose contemplation lead to immediate death by freezing of the people that watched it. There is also some inherent drawback in connecting human brain structure and its functions: people suffering from Hydrocephalia, a condition in which the internal CNS liquor pressure raises, and blows the brain cavities like a balloon, sometimes reach an advanced state when there's no more brain cortex left than one centimeter or little more, the rest of skull content being a cavity filled by liquid. Those people may have a neurological and cognitive activity not distinguishable form normal subjects. Who can handle this ?. Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYUP... the inexorable march toward the body's "final frontier" ... our minds, which is to say our physical brains... the intricate and evolved neural network (NN)... rolls on... at a faster pace that will only accelerate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis project of mapping neurons has been in play in "simpler" animal models, and it's application to the human specie an obvious next step. During neuro-surgery microprobes are used to assess neuronal-anatomic relationships and function as well.
There can be no doubt that we are in fact, our neural networks or "connectomes"... which is obviously where Nature and nurture/experience are entangled. To separate Nature from Nuture was always a false dicotomy.
Similarly, "consciousness problem" is pure myth... and can only be instantiated by our brains (what else?)... the 100 billion neurons with their myriad connections.
In twenty years... we will be in a far different place regarding both basic neuroscience and how genetics/epigenetics shape our NN's and thus our personalities, behaviors and the dysfunction we term "psycho-pathology" or "mental illness".
Good comments! Also, to the extent that some 'software' perhaps recorded in memory controls the flow of various processes, mapping circuit activity may be pointless. I can't imagine attempting to reverse engineer computer software by monitoring the patterns of circuit activity in a multitasking computer. You might be able to locate the 'adder'...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome really smart guy (clearly not me) said the following at the beginning of the computer age:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It is merely a matter of time before every atom in the universe will be quantified."
Reverse engineering the brain may well seem a quaint technology a hundred years hence, perhaps on the order of what the first printing press seems to us today.....
Current cosmological models suggest that only 4% of the mass-energy of the universe can be detected for any quantification. Of that estimated total mass-energy, detectable matter is thought to be 17% of all matter, while 83% is some unidentified type of undetectable matter not predicted by the standard model of particle physics. I think we've got a long way to go before all matter in the universe is quantified, unless we continue to rely entirely on hypothetical estimates, but I suppose it's still "merely a matter of time."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough it sounds really super high tech and all-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissome of your fundamental assumptions are wrong.
First of all- you assume that one thing causes each brain disease. A one to one relationship between cause and pathology. Structure and disease, for example. It's clear all those simple correlations have been found. If you start looking for combinations of things you will have better luck.
Secondly, a lot of brain diseases actually ARE caused by pathogens- really slow common pathogens. Things like Herpes, HSV1- which research shows is intrically involved in the pathology of Alzheimers disease. You ignore this virus because "everyone has it". But people have differing amounts of immunity to HSV, so only some infected people are affected. Combinations of factors my friend.
Mapping the entire brain is a truly commendable activity- but you are elevating it's utility while ignoring other methods.
And for the record, Obsessive-Compulsive disorder causes a tendency to be overconfident. It is caused by Strep Bacteria- you might want to research that a bit too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is time for the public to be told the truth:
Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and sporadic Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (sCJD)
are sister prion diseases, transmissible, infectious by medical
equipment, (scopes, etc.) dental and eye equipment, blood, urine, feces,
saliva, mucous (aerosols: possibly by coughs & sneezes) Doctors
frequently misdiagnose AD and sCJD one for the other. The symptoms and
neuropathology are almost identifical.
Right now the US is in the middle of a raging, always fatal, prion
disease epidemic: There are over 6 million victims of AD and 1 million
Parkinson's Disease victims, with a new AD case every 69 seconds !
Recent research (October 2011) by Dr. Claudio Soto, et al, University of
Texas Medical School, has confirmed earlier research which found
injecting Alzheimer's brain material into mice brains caused infectious
prion disease.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111004113757.htm
See Video - Dr. Soto on Alzheimer's disease and prions: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtN6hoyTdR4
Then how can people affect/see things at a distance?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPear Labs have proved it more than once to a billion to 1 that it's chance. These science sites wouldn't give credit to this as it is too quack and too far from the middle for them. Funny thing is quack turns out to be the truth in this case and many more if you research it.
The brain doesn't create anything they assume it does. That is a physical materialist view that will be blown away in the next 100 years or maybe sooner depending on when the snowball of info starts a rolling.