Eudoxia comments on Cryonics: Can I Take Door No. 3? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Chris_Roberts 05 September 2012 03:49PM

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Comment author: Eudoxia 06 September 2012 12:30:16AM *  1 point [-]

substantially better neuroscience

We have plenty of models of neurons and some of them imitate neurons very well.

Eugene Izhikevich simulated an entire human brain equivalent with his model and he saw some pretty interesting emergent behaviour (Granted, the anatomy had to be generated randomly at every iteration, so we still need better computers).

Comment author: Dolores1984 06 September 2012 12:39:09AM 4 points [-]

That's true, but we need to get it really, really close. Even relatively small statistical deviations from the behavior of the real neurons are probably intolerable. Besides, real neurons are not interchangeable: they have unique statistical biases and are influenced by a variety of factors not modeled by modern simulations, like neurotransmitter diffusion, glial activity, and subtle quirks of specific dendrites and axons.

Right now, even if you gave us a high-speed brain scanner, a high-speed computer, and an unlimited budget, we wouldn't have the capability to interpret the image data the scanner produced, or even be quite sure which immunostains to use for the optical imaging to pin down the required details. I expect it to take at least five to ten years for us to get the theoretical details ironed out.