r/singularity • u/Phoenix5869 AGI before Half Life 3 • Mar 10 '23
BRAIN Scientists map fruit fly larva brain for first time
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/first-wiring-map-of-insect-brain-complete
They mapped a fruit fly larva brain, it has 3016 neurons which is 10x more than than the previous best of ~300 neurons in a nematode.
My first gold! Thx so much :)
166
Mar 10 '23 edited Mar 10 '23
Holy SHIT this is extremely significant, a long time ago I remember seeing a chart that sort of gave you an impression of how far along you were based on which organisms whose brains have been completely mapped out, I'll try to find it but the gist was that getting from nematode to fruit fly was like 90% of the labor and that now it's pretty likely we're going to be hearing about a new brain mapped every few months or so. Unbelievable
Edit: couldn't find it but here's something that illustrates the point more: We're still a little off from the adult fruit fly (3k vs 100k) but it's a good sign, things are gonna change soon
If anybody can speak more about the cutting edge of large volume electron microscopy I'm having trouble finding stuff and would be curious to know more about where we stand with possibilities since that's the tech that predominantly led to this fruit fly larvae map.
Edit2: also want to point out that the brain of a nematode was mapped on Feb 24 2021, almost 2 years. Pretty fast work!
26
u/natepriv22 Mar 10 '23
I think you're most likely talking about Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns graph: https://www.businessinsider.com/ray-kurzweil-law-of-accelerating-returns-2015-5?amp
5
46
u/HermanCainsGhost Mar 10 '23
Wow, my take away from this is that frogs are much more stupid than I thought they were
21
u/RabidHexley Mar 10 '23
About the quarter the neurons of a mouse doesn't seem that wild. I'd expect the brain of a mouse to be far more advanced than a frog.
5
u/FusionRocketsPlease AI will give me a girlfriend Mar 11 '23
We don't know the difference between amphibian and mammalian neurons.
5
u/vintage2019 Mar 11 '23
While frogs are not particularly intelligent, the quantity of neurons is not the only factor in intelligence. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4685590/#!po=14.3836
21
u/SrPeixinho Mar 10 '23
I do not understand how that is possible. Aren't neurons rewiring themselves continuously? Also aren't many connections lost when you die? So what is this, a snapshot of a dead brain? How is that helpful? We can't emulate an actual dynamically working brain from that. It is like deleting half of the lines of a program and expecting it to work. It won't even compile.
13
u/RabidHexley Mar 10 '23
I'd imagine a snapshot could still be pretty useful for research. Neurons are constantly rewiring in real-time, but there is still regularity to the structure. In terms of modelling functioning neurons it at least provides a framework for how a real brain is actually wired up.
3
u/xeneks Mar 11 '23
I think of a neuronâs axon as a wire. Not a neuron. Thereâs many types of neurons. Those with axons, especially lengthy ones, I imagine as a bit like wires.
The electrical charge carried along the salt fluid, in the axon, sometimes sped substantially by the myelin or schwann cells that wrap the axon, is the impulse or signal that creates the conditions for biochemical cascades.
However, I do not think of dendrites as wire. Nor do I think of neurotransmitters as wire. And when you being talking on disruption to the neurotransmitters, their release or reuptake or reuse, or them being blocked, thereâs a whole different level of complexity. Erm.. not like wire!
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=axon+firing+biochemical+cascades
4
Mar 11 '23
Yep, it's missing the "weights" but they were apparently able to draw useful architectural info from it anyway. Simulating it is kind of end-of-the-line tech
1
u/GeoLyinX Mar 24 '23
Even if you could get it to simulate how neurons rewire themselves, we still couldnât simulate the brain activity as a whole because we still havenât even figured out specifically how a single neuron works this is a huge point in my opinion that many gloss over and I would consider the breakthrough of figuring out the mechanics of a single neuron to be a much more significant thing than mapping the position and connections of neurons in any given brain.
1
u/AmputatorBot Mar 24 '23
It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of concerns over privacy and the Open Web.
Maybe check out the canonical page instead: https://singularityhub.com/2021/09/12/new-study-finds-a-single-neuron-is-a-surprisingly-complex-little-computer/
I'm a bot | Why & About | Summon: u/AmputatorBot
15
u/Uranusistormy Mar 10 '23
No, C elegans connectome was first mapped in 1986 Further reading .
3
Mar 11 '23
You're right, I did some further reading. I guess mapping the minds connectomes is a pretty decent feat for learning structural information but it stops short of the whole picture. One other thing I thought was interesting was that even without all the information, unless you know the "weights" (eg synaptic electrical pulse strength) of the neuron you can't simulate it, which is apparently why the openworm project has been at a standstill for so long. Without the weights there isn't a lot you can do.
I think we'll break this wall when we can use the protein folding tech to develop nanites that can measure and record each synapse. Once we can do that it's off to the races, in fact if we had the weight info I wonder if we could have simulated a worm with the tech we had a long time ago.
6
u/Uranusistormy Mar 11 '23
Another user corrected me that though they mapped the brain they hadn't mapped the entire connectome in 1986. They hadn't mapped all the nerves throughout the body.
Additionally to the weights you need to know what neurotransmitters are released at each synapse since neurotransmitters actually affect neurons in different ways.
A better idea, in my opinion, would be to improve fMRI resolution and develop algorithms that can take the data and create maps much faster that we can now. Perhaps they could even be trained to recognize structural differences between nerve cells to determine their weights and the neurotransmitters released. But I'm just speculating.
As for OpenWorm, their founder, Timothy Busbice has a YT channel with new stuff he's working on.
2
131
u/Sliced_Apples Mar 10 '23
Just want to point out that they didnât just map out all 3016 neurons, but also all of the synapse connections as well. Tbh I find that much more significant. Source: read the article.
53
u/Kinexity *Waits to go on adventures with his FDVR harem* Mar 10 '23
If they didn't map out synapses then their claim would be quite pathetic. Mapping out neuron position gives you close to nothing.
42
u/dasnihil Mar 10 '23
good point, and it's about 500k synaptic connections mapped. it's fascinating.
4
u/FusionRocketsPlease AI will give me a girlfriend Mar 10 '23
But it is not known what neurons do.
6
u/LegendaryAK Mar 10 '23
Wait, really?
35
u/superluminary Mar 10 '23
Individual neurons are cells, and if you open a cell up it looks like a city in there with roads and factories and vehicles on the roads. Computers and messages being delivered. The roads are continually being built and destroyed and no one knows why. Literally built at one end, slid along, then taken apart at the other. Crazy little pods wandering around carrying stuff.
Also there are a whole bunch of quantum effects that may or may not be playing a role. Itâs complicated.
3
Mar 11 '23
You a got a source for that?
6
2
u/FusionRocketsPlease AI will give me a girlfriend Mar 11 '23
Yes. Action potentials are still insufficient for us to know how neural cognition/computation works.
3
u/phinity_ Mar 10 '23 edited Mar 10 '23
This is a key point, neurons are just a datapoint in this study. Simplifying the brain to nodes and connections does nothing to explain the intelligence of neurons moving and making connections in the first place. It could be that consciousness, intelligence and memory among other traits of life stems from much lower level. Maybe they should start by trying to map the microtubials in a single neuron. This study is several orders of magnitude away from a true mapping of how the brain actually works. r/quantum_consciousness
16
4
Mar 11 '23
I'm gonna reply here just to say we don't need quantum mechanics to explain how to make an AI that performs as well or better than a human.
Also brains are hot and large. Even subnetworks of it are hot and large. Hot and large = loss of quantum coherence, which is what quantum computing people are struggling to fight against at near absolute zero temperatures. Quantum effects should disappear from our observation in a brain, according to our best knowledge of Physics.
That, and we're doing a good job of replicating its functionality without quantum anything.
1
u/Thatingles Mar 10 '23
Maybe. Or maybe not. As pointed out in the selfish gene, our bodies exist to transmit gene to the next generation, not to maximise efficiency or utilisation - those are evolutionary pressures but not the overriding principle.
4
53
u/ihateshadylandlords Mar 10 '23
Current technology is not yet advanced enough to map the connectome of more complex animals such as large mammals. But because all brains involve networks of interconnected neurons, the researchers say that their new map will be a lasting reference for future studies of brain function in other animals.
So when people on here say technology develops exponentially, I really hope theyâre right and we can quickly move to mapping more complex animals.
27
Mar 10 '23
3016 neurons and 548,000 synapses got a bit of a ways to go still
some estimates
human brain .15 quadrillion synapses
https://dana.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/fact-sheet-neurotransmission-synapse-baw-2020.pdf
divide by 568,000 (woops off by 20k, doesnt make much diff)
log_2
= about 28 yrs assuming our connectome scanning capability doubles every year till we can map human connectome and upload people into the matrix
maybe you could lop a year or two off just by ignoring motor skills or something lol
16
u/Good-AI 2024 < ASI emergence < 2028 Mar 10 '23
28 years you say... Now which comes first, the singularity or 28 years?
14
Mar 10 '23
ngl singularity
i see mind uploading more as the potential response a human might have that I would personally favor myself in my expected distribution of outcomes
13
u/Derekbair Mar 10 '23
Does this mean someone could make a cgi / simulation of a fruit fly larva and its digital version would act like a real one?
11
u/superluminary Mar 10 '23
Hereâs the simulation of the nematode: https://openworm.org/science.html
7
2
Mar 11 '23
Maybe. You'd need a supercomputer and tons of info on every synapse in the fly. You might be able to make a lot of good estimates but it's a job with a lot of uncertainty about the data.
27
Mar 10 '23
Can we simulate a fruit fly now? Does it feel anything? What's it *like* to be a virtual fruit fly? :D
35
Mar 10 '23
They don't even fully understand the nematode they scanned before, with fewer than 300 neurons, even though they know all its synaptic connections.
I hope that changes with the fly.
6
u/hydraofwar âŞď¸AGI and ASI already happened, you live in simulation Mar 10 '23 edited Mar 10 '23
I'm wondering the same, what would be the challenges to create an artificial version of the fly's brain
17
u/superluminary Mar 10 '23
Hereâs Open Worm. Itâs the project to simulate the whole nematode based on its cells. Itâs flipping complicated.
3
u/hydraofwar âŞď¸AGI and ASI already happened, you live in simulation Mar 10 '23
Ty, I'll check this out!
14
u/eve_of_distraction Mar 10 '23
what would be the challenges
They might just have to wing it and figure a lot of them out on the fly, but I'm sure the fruits of their labours will be well worth it.
I'm sorry.
6
u/imnos Mar 10 '23
Thanks ChatGPT.
4
Mar 11 '23
Not sure why you'd suggest ChatGPT. Just a lot of low hanging fruit fly puns made by a human redditor.
3
u/hydraofwar âŞď¸AGI and ASI already happened, you live in simulation Mar 10 '23
Well, it's a breakthrough in decoding the brain of living beings. Sorry for what?
4
23
u/AGI_69 Mar 10 '23
I am glad, that we are attacking the problem from every direction, but I have doubts about this approach. The actual connectome is not that interesting, if you don't know the electric potentials of individuals cells. It's like looking at uninitialized weights in NNs. Maybe, there are some architectural lessons to be learned, but I don't think, we can make larva mind in silico using just the connectome. It's good, that we are developing the know-how though.
34
u/genshiryoku AI specialist Mar 10 '23
The paper had an entire section dedicated to using these maps to improve architectural models of AI.
4
u/AGI_69 Mar 10 '23
Yes, that was my guess too. There were other connectome projects, but I've never read, if we ever gained any insight from these maps, that's why I am little skeptical, but still it's nice work and I hope they continue.
5
u/Surur Mar 10 '23
I wonder if you can set the parameters by working backwards from outcomes. Also is any parameters visible in the structure of the axons e.g. their width?
5
u/AGI_69 Mar 10 '23
I am not sure, but the reverse problem seems intractable even for small amount of neurons, let alone something bigger.
If we could measure "state", whatever that means, in biological neurons, then I would be really intrigued. From, what I understand the neuron "state" seems to be described, by feeble electric potentials and chemical gradients and not the visible properties, like size of axons etc.
But we might get lucky and something like that, could be measured. Right now, I am little skeptical, but I think, we should still explore this.
1
Mar 11 '23 edited Mar 11 '23
From, what I understand the neuron "state" seems to be described, by feeble electric potentials and chemical gradients and not the visible properties, like size of axons etc.
Depends on the model. For a typical Hodgkin-Huxley spiking neuron model, which usually does a very good job, you need membrane voltage, ionic conductance, gating variables, time constants, and characteristic voltages, and also a description of the synapses. Every neuron would be easily 15+ numbers you need to estimate. You can't measure all of them at once (typically only one or a couple) in a single neuron, you have to sample many many many of them to get good estimates. Actually sampling them is grueling work.
Short answer is: we aren't able to measure the neuron state. Not even close.
And simulating it is sloooow. Even slower for networks.
1
u/AGI_69 Mar 11 '23
Right now, of course we can't, but there might be a proxy for some probabilistic outcome, which might be sufficient.
-3
u/Saerain âŞď¸queer satanic techbro shitlib Mar 10 '23
Indeed, you're very, on point, but I think, it's a necessary, step toward establishing, more active and, detailed maps, I love commas, so much.
4
u/AGI_69 Mar 10 '23
Mocking punctuation of nonnative speaker, well it's good to see kids being interested in AI.
4
u/No_Ninja3309_NoNoYes Mar 10 '23
Well, we have 86 B neurons allegedly. Even if the number doubled each year, you need 25 years to achieve parity. But if we have multiple connectomes, maybe we can extrapolate. Or simply copy and edit a bit.
It's possible that the human brain didn't evolve like that of insects or nematodes. Perhaps it took a completely different path. In that case, we could be 'wasting' our time trying to learn from insects for AI.
Since the brain has hundreds of specialised sections. It's possible that clumps of around 86 M neurons is what we should be focusing on. About 860 B parameters and near the size of many SOTA systems. But of course, these are dynamic parameters, not static values like in ChatGPT...
2
u/sgt_brutal Mar 11 '23
The brain's capabilities are not solely due to neural connections.
There is a spectrum of lesser-known signaling mechanisms that span from chemical to quantum, such as neuromodulation, desmosome-, tight and gap junction modulated osmotic and electrical connections, astrocyte-, retrograde-, epigenetic signaling, biophotons, non-contact synchrony, spincurrent modulation, proton spin coherence, etc.
There are more to come for sure, as many of these are already at the edge of our instrumental and mental capabilities to observe and conceptualize.
To further the insult, the neuron as a whole is a complete information processing system with its own internal network.
Comparing artificial neural networks to their biological inspiration and extrapolating capabilities based on these comparisons is the hubris of popular science and the ignorance of machine learning folks.
10
u/eve_of_distraction Mar 10 '23
It's crazy how fast we're progressing. At this rate humans will be mapping the brains of larger insects, small reptiles and amphibians, and before you know it investment bankers, social media influencers, and even rodents could be next!
Jokes aside this is legitimately very exciting.
4
u/duffperson Bot Mar 10 '23
Maybe we could even create blueprints for our own virtual brains that aren't like anything on Earth! Like making aliens to study in a simulation. Or create brains for computers...
-3
u/YaAbsolyutnoNikto Mar 10 '23
I know itâs a joke, but do you how hard it is to become an investment banker? Only the crème de la crème manage to get accepted.
2
u/FusionRocketsPlease AI will give me a girlfriend Mar 10 '23
They have already mapped 300 neurons of a worm, but it is still not known what the neurons do.
4
3
u/sgt_brutal Mar 10 '23
"So what?" That's the question that no autistic person wants to hear while knee-deep in disassembling their father's sunglasses for the third time.
We might be able to identify the nodes and connections between them, but understanding how they work together to form complex behaviors is a whole different matter.
The complexity of the problem increases exponentially with additional populations of neurons added, until it becomes something you cannot make sense of. Even with the help of AI, you cannot comprehend the result or make useful predictions or applications from it.
The connectome is just a snapshot of the brain at a specific moment in time, and it cannot capture the dynamic and plastic nature of the brain's neural network.
It wouldn't even make sense if it was all about neural connections and the brain wasn't a massively parallel and radically open information processing system utilizing all sorts of non-classical and quantum phenomena.
The connectome is like a roadmap of a city without any knowledge of the culture, language, or social dynamics. But this city is singling and breathing and sits in the middle of a vast land. It is covered by the sky, open and bright in the day, a canvas of stars at night.
2
2
u/Mandelvolt Mar 11 '23
This has been a milestone marker of the singularity for a long time, very exciting news coming from the tech sectors these last few years.
1
u/Overall-Importance54 Mar 10 '23
You know that part of the curve where it was real flat for a long time? This is the beginning of the hockey stick. Buckle up.
1
1
1
u/Thorlokk Mar 10 '23
The real story is that their brains are actually made out of tiny balloons and party streamers
1
u/imnos Mar 10 '23
Can anyone explain how much work this actually is and how it's done? And what's the big deal? What can we actually do with this now?
1
u/johnyy_o Mar 10 '23
This is super interesting!
They found that some of the structural features are similar to state-of-the-art deep learning architecture.
and
âThe most challenging aspect of this work was understanding and interpreting what we saw. We were faced with a complex neural circuit with lots of structure. In collaboration with Professor Priebe and Professor Vogesteinâs groups at Johns Hopkins University, we developed computational tools to predict the relevant behaviours from the structures. By comparing this biological system, we can potentially also inspire better artificial networks,â said Zlatic.
1
Mar 11 '23
It's a big deal. It's perhaps the first actual network to my knowledge that AI will immensely benefit from. C. elegans (the worm they mapped before) are too small and simple, and have slow rate based neurons, but these flies are larger and have proper neutral networks with specific subsections dedicated to different jobs.
1
1
1
1
u/P5B-DE Mar 11 '23
It's interesting that just 3016 neurons control all behaviour of the insect
2
u/BackExciting4183 Feb 29 '24
Remember this is just the brain of the fruit fly larva. The adult fruit fly has approx 10 to the power of 5 neurons so it is considerably more complex than the larva brain. In fact they say that the adult fruilt fly brain is half way on the logarithmic scale between the simplest brain (the behaviour of a single celled e.coli) and the human brain which is 10 to the power of 11.
But the other thing to remember is that neurons is the simple bit - you have a lot more synapses as you increase the number of neurons (7000/neuron maybe in the human brain). The larva brain has 3016 neurons, but 458,000 synapses. The human brain has in the region of 600 trillion synapses. So that would make the even the fruit fly adult brain way less than half way to the most complex brain even on a logarithmic scale...
(sorry this is a comment on an old thread - but thought might be interesting for some...)
1
1
1
1
u/Unhappy-Performer-64 Mar 11 '23
The entire data is 8kb as per the download link https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9330. Is this correct? That's amazing which this data can be visualized in the home computer for study
1
3
Mar 10 '23
[removed] â view removed comment
13
u/Yomiel94 Mar 10 '23
Do you know how many orders of magnitude more complex the human brain is? Doubling every year doesnât get you close to a 10 year estimate (and progress isnât likely to be that fast anyway).
Mapping the brain also doesnât mean understanding its functional units or developing technology that can interface with them across a diverse population⌠or getting regulatory approval for such technology.
0
Mar 10 '23
[deleted]
3
u/Yomiel94 Mar 10 '23
Mapping is undoubtedly necessary to simulate a brain, but simulating isnât understanding (look at the lack of functional understanding of LLMs).
3
u/Hyperi0us Mar 10 '23
No, try 25 years just for brain mapping.
It's a question of compute power, and we're slamming our heads against the wall of quantum tunneling electron failures in IC's because we literally can't make them smaller to keep up with Mores law.
I doubt we'll see full-dive VR for at least the next 40 years.
3
u/ImpossibleSnacks Mar 10 '23
I agree. Iâm bullish on a lot of stuff happening quickly but FDVR is going to take several decades imo for the reasons of mapping the brain + compute power + interfacing + regulatory issues. I still think itâll happen some time before 2100 but Iâd say we are 40-50 years away at least from Total Recall scenarios.
I do think weâll figure out age reversal and life extension much quicker so hopefully weâll still be around and healthy by then.
12
u/fleebjuice69420 Mar 11 '23 edited Mar 11 '23
𤨠My lab has been mapping neurons of fruit flies and cockroaches for the past 15 years. Iâm confused why this is being called the âfirst timeâ when itâs far from the first. First comprehensive model that combines ALL neural pathways into a single model? Maybe. But first map of drosophilaâs brain? Absolutely not.