[LINK] AmA by computational neuroscientists behind 'the world's largest functional brain model'

Not sure if this has been covered on LW, but it seems highly relevant to WBE development. Link here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/147gqm/we_are_the_computational_neuroscientists_behind/

A few questioners mention the Singularity and make Skynet jokes.

The abstract from their paper in Science:

A central challenge for cognitive and systems neuroscience is to relate the incredibly complex behavior of animals to the equally complex activity of their brains. Recently described, large-scale neural models have not bridged this gap between neural activity and biological function. In this work, we present a 2.5-million-neuron model of the brain (called “Spaun”) that bridges this gap by exhibiting many different behaviors. The model is presented only with visual image sequences, and it draws all of its responses with a physically modeled arm. Although simplified, the model captures many aspects of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and psychological behavior, which we demonstrate via eight diverse tasks.

I'm curious to see LWers' perspectives on the project.

Not sure if this has been covered on LW, but it seems highly relevant to WBE development. Link here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/147gqm/we_are_the_computational_neuroscientists_behind/

A few questioners mention the Singularity and make Skynet jokes.

The abstract from their paper in Science:

A central challenge for cognitive and systems neuroscience is to relate the incredibly complex behavior of animals to the equally complex activity of their brains. Recently described, large-scale neural models have not bridged this gap between neural activity and biological function. In this work, we present a 2.5-million-neuron model of the brain (called “Spaun”) that bridges this gap by exhibiting many different behaviors. The model is presented only with visual image sequences, and it draws all of its responses with a physically modeled arm. Although simplified, the model captures many aspects of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and psychological behavior, which we demonstrate via eight diverse tasks.

I'm curious to see LWers' perspectives on the project.

Hi, it's Terry again (one of the researchers on the project)

The interesting thing (for me) isn't that it can shift from task to task, but that it can shift from task to task just like the human brain. In other words, we're showing how a realistic neural system can shift between tasks. That's something that's not found in other neural models, where you tend to either have it do one task or you have external (non-neural) systems modify the model for different tasks. We're showing a way of doing that selecting routing and control in an entirely neural way that maps nicely onto the cortex-basal ganglia-thalamus loop.

Oh, and, since we constrain the model with a bunch of physical parameters influencing the timing of the system (reabsorption of neurotransmitter, mostly), we can also look at how long it takes the system to switch tasks, and compare that to human brains. It's these sorts of comparisons that let us use this sort of model to test hypotheses about what different parts of the brain are doing.

According to my understanding, Spaun is only able to shift between a fixed set of tasks, and according to a fixed algorithm (if the first two inputs are "A1", route the information one way so that it ends up doing one task, and if the first inputs are "A2", route the information another way, etc.) that was manually designed. You haven't explained yet (or emulated) how human brains are able to switch fluidly between an ever changing set of possibe tasks, and without having to be prompted by specific codes such as "A1" and "... (read more)

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[LINK] AmA by computational neuroscientists behind 'the world's largest functional brain model'

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[LINK] AmA by computational neuroscientists behind 'the world's largest functional brain model'

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