Thanks for pledging and encouraging others to pledge! Full disclosure: I'm the coordinator for the project. I've been having a look through the discussions on your references and I'd offer the following thoughts:
I think Hanson's three part break down (Computing power, brain scanning, cell modeling) is useful and I agree that cell modeling is an important research investment that has not had enough focus, either academically or industrially. Better cell models is one of the technological advances that OpenWorm helps to address due to its approach to mode...
There is a good review of strategies for building computational models of neurons here:
I think you are right on. I would extend your comment a bit which is to say we are not just missing a methodological breakthrough, but we are not even really attempting to develop the methods necessary. The problem is not just scientific but also what is considered to be science that is worth funding.
Modeling lobster stomach ganglion work is going on at Brandeis and what they are finding is important: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2913134&tool=pmcentrez&rendertype=abstract
Given the results they are finding, and building on their methods it is not inappropriate to start thinking one level up to c. elegans
I would respectfully disagree with Dr. Hayworth.
I would challenge him to show a "well characterized and mapped out part of the mammalian brain" that has a fraction of the detail that is known in c. elegans already. Moreover, the prospect of building a simulation requires that you can constrain the inputs and the outputs to the simulation. While this is a hard problem in c. elegans, its orders of magnitude more difficult to do well in a mammalian system.
There is still no retina connectome to work with (c. elegans has it). There are debates ab...
Hi all,
Glad there's excitement on this subject. I'm currently coordinating an open source project whose goal is to do a full simulation of the c. elegans (http://openworm.googlecode.com). More on that in a minute.
If you are surveying past c. elegans simulation efforts, you should be sure not to leave out the following:
A Biologically Accurate 3D Model of the Locomotion of Caenorhabditis Elegans, Roger Mailler, U. Tulsa http://j.mp/toeAR8
C. Elegans Locomotion: An integrated Approach -- Jordan Boyle, U. Leeds http://j.mp/fqKPEw
Back to Open Worm. We've jus...
I did -- could you summarize what parts of this you take away to discourage you specifically? There's quite a few things you could be resonating with there.