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Simulated mouse-brain running at 1/10 speed


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#1 ryanscott

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Posted 27 April 2007 - 07:48 AM


Simulated mouse-brain running at 1/10 speed
IBM researchers have modelled a mouse's brain at 10 percent speed -- and what can be done at 10 percent speed today can be done at 1000 percent in a couple cycles of Moore's Law. Super-intelligent virtual mice ahoy!

http://www.openthefu...he_long_to.html

Ryan Scott

#2 Live Forever

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Posted 27 April 2007 - 02:09 PM

Sweet action.

What order of magnitude is a human brain's complexity more than a mouse's brain? (just a ballpark number)

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#3 Athanasios

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Posted 27 April 2007 - 04:47 PM

Sweet action.

What order of magnitude is a human brain's complexity more than a mouse's brain? (just a ballpark number)


From, http://www.transhuma...me1/moravec.htm , 'When will computer hardware match the human brain?' 1997

#4 Live Forever

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Posted 27 April 2007 - 05:23 PM

Thanks for the linke, cnoorwood.

I should have just clicked on the original link ryanscott provided:

The human brain has some 100 billion neurons, so this mouse brain simulation is still about 1/12,500 of a simulated human brain. That may sound like a daunting challenge, until a glance at computer history makes clear that such computational capabilities will likely be possible on within 20 years, easily, if not even sooner.



#5 Brainbox

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Posted 28 April 2007 - 02:12 PM

Neurobiologically realistic, large-scale cortical and sub-cortical simulations are bound to play a key role in computational neuroscience and its applications to cognitive computing. One hemisphere of the mouse cortex has roughly 8,000,000 neurons and 8,000 synapses per neuron. Modeling at this scale imposes tremendous constraints on computation, communication, and memory capacity of any computing platform.
We have designed and implemented a massively parallel cortical simulator with (a) phenomenological spiking neuron models; (b) spike-timing dependent plasticity; and © axonal delays.

We deployed the simulator on a 4096-processor BlueGene/L supercomputer with 256 MB per CPU. We were able to represent 8,000,000 neurons (80% excitatory) and 6,300 synapses per neuron in the 1 TB main memory of the system. Using a synthetic pattern of neuronal interconnections, at a 1 ms resolution and an average firing rate of 1 Hz, we were able to run 1s of model time in 10s of real time!


This seems to be a fairly decent low level of abstraction, as opposed to behavioural modelling. ;)

Some of that is going to depend upon how much of the simulation models actual brain structure, rather than simply the number of connections. That's likely to be crucial. The brain isn't simply a haphazard mass of neural junctions, and a functional structure simulation may well prove to be a far greater challenge than simply getting the neural connection sim working. Still, this is not an unsolvable problem, by any extent.


Ha, they didn't simulate "a mouse" with it yet, like behaving and learning of an actual mouse, but still, impressive if you ask me!

#6 lucid

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Posted 30 April 2007 - 10:44 PM

http://news.bbc.co.u.../6600965.stm?ls

Mouse brain simulated on computer
BlueGene L under construction, IBM
It takes a supercomputer to mimic a mouse brain
US researchers have simulated half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer.

The scientists ran a "cortical simulator" that was as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer.

In other smaller simulations the researchers say they have seen characteristics of thought patterns observed in real mouse brains.

Now the team is tuning the simulation to make it run faster and to make it more like a real mouse brain.

Life signs

Brain tissue presents a huge problem for simulation because of its complexity and the sheer number of potential interactions between the elements involved.

The three researchers, James Frye, Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan, and Dharmendra S Modha, laid out how they went about it in a very short research note entitled "Towards Real-Time, Mouse-Scale Cortical Simulations".

Half a real mouse brain is thought to have about eight million neurons each one of which can have up to 8,000 synapses, or connections, with other nerve fibres.

Modelling such a system, the trio wrote, puts "tremendous constraints on computation, communication and memory capacity of any computing platform".

The team, from the IBM Almaden Research Lab and the University of Nevada, ran the simulation on a BlueGene L supercomputer that had 4,096 processors, each one of which used 256MB of memory.

Using this machine the researchers created half a virtual mouse brain that had 8,000,000 neurons that had up to 6,300 synapses.

The vast complexity of the simulation meant that it was only run for 10 seconds at a speed ten times slower than real life - the equivalent of one second in a real mouse brain.

On other smaller simulations the researchers said they had seen "biologically consistent dynamical properties" emerge as nerve impulses flowed through the virtual cortex.

In these other tests the team saw the groups of neurons form spontaneously into groups. They also saw nerves in the simulated synapses firing in a ways similar to the staggered, co-ordinated patterns seen in nature.

The researchers say that although the simulation shared some similarities with a mouse's mental make-up in terms of nerves and connections it lacked the structures seen in real mice brains.

Imposing such structures and getting the simulation to do useful work might be a much more difficult task than simply setting up the plumbing.

For future tests the team aims to speed up the simulation, make it more neurobiologically faithful, add structures seen in real mouse brains and make the responses of neurons and synapses more detailed.



#7 armrha

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Posted 02 May 2007 - 08:02 PM

Great news... but can't wait to see more. I hope our imaging techniques advance at the same rate...

#8 Brainbox

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Posted 02 May 2007 - 09:26 PM

Specialism in contrast to generalism?

#9 darwinsdog

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Posted 07 September 2007 - 07:34 PM

anyone ever read Greg Egan's story "Dust" (turned into a novel called Permutation City)? Sounds a lot like this experiment - starts with a guy who uploads his mind to chip, but because of the limitations of technology the chip brain runs at a fraction of the speed of the world outside. great story.

#10 niner

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Posted 08 September 2007 - 03:45 AM

The vast complexity of the simulation meant that it was only run for 10 seconds at a speed ten times slower than real life - the equivalent of one second in a real mouse brain.

Compare this to molecular dynamics simulation of a macromolecule in a realistic aqueous environment- one second of real time would require like a century of CPU time. This thing completed in ten seconds!?! Why didn't they run it longer, or make it more complex? I mean, they own the computer, right? Or does this mean that they simulated 10 seconds of the brain activity of a really stoned mouse, and they aren't saying how much CPU time it took? I'd guess the latter, but the reporting is not very clear.

#11 platypus

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Posted 08 September 2007 - 10:28 AM

Mouses are probably aware. Do you think this simulation was?

#12 tamalak

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Posted 23 September 2007 - 10:58 PM

Mouses are probably aware. Do you think this simulation was?


I think as the science of AI progresses we're going to slowly realize just how much of an illusion the concept of "awareness" is

#13 bgwowk

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Posted 24 September 2007 - 02:25 AM

I think as the science of AI progresses we're going to slowly realize just how much of an illusion the concept of "awareness" is

Then you'd have no objection to using a paralytic agent rather than anesthesia the next time you need surgery????

#14 tamalak

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Posted 24 September 2007 - 01:37 PM

I think as the science of AI progresses we're going to slowly realize just how much of an illusion the concept of "awareness" is

Then you'd have no objection to using a paralytic agent rather than anesthesia the next time you need surgery????


Of course I'd object. And I'll bet a pain-adverse AI would object too.

#15 bgwowk

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Posted 24 September 2007 - 03:30 PM

Doesn't that prove the importance of awareness as a concept? Without awareness, concepts of joy, sorrow, pleasure, or pain are meaningless. Repudiation of awareness has always struck me as a form of nihilism that could be used to justify all sorts of imposed suffering.

#16 platypus

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Posted 25 September 2007 - 03:06 PM

Mouses are probably aware. Do you think this simulation was?


I think as the science of AI progresses we're going to slowly realize just how much of an illusion the concept of "awareness" is

There's no way it can be an "illusion". You cannot be aware of even an illusion without awareness. Cogito, ergo sum.

#17 tamalak

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Posted 25 September 2007 - 04:57 PM

Mouses are probably aware. Do you think this simulation was?


I think as the science of AI progresses we're going to slowly realize just how much of an illusion the concept of "awareness" is

There's no way it can be an "illusion". You cannot be aware of even an illusion without awareness. Cogito, ergo sum.


The big problem I have with the concept of "awareness" is that it is not falsifiable.

That is, if I were to make the claim "x is aware", how would I even theoretically prove it? How could someone even theoretically DISprove it?

If a claim is not falsifiable, it isn't really a claim at all, because it doesn't impose any restrictions or imply any tests.

You might say "I can't prove/disprove if anything else is aware, but I know that *I*'m aware because I'm experiencing the awareness right now". Except, have you ever experienced NOT being aware? Of course not ;). So you have nothing to compare it to, so no way to create a definition.

#18 platypus

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Posted 26 September 2007 - 07:55 AM

Mouses are probably aware. Do you think this simulation was?

I think as the science of AI progresses we're going to slowly realize just how much of an illusion the concept of "awareness" is

There's no way it can be an "illusion". You cannot be aware of even an illusion without awareness. Cogito, ergo sum.

The big problem I have with the concept of "awareness" is that it is not falsifiable.

That is, if I were to make the claim "x is aware", how would I even theoretically prove it? How could someone even theoretically DISprove it?

If a claim is not falsifiable, it isn't really a claim at all, because it doesn't impose any restrictions or imply any tests.

You might say "I can't prove/disprove if anything else is aware, but I know that *I*'m aware because I'm experiencing the awareness right now". Except, have you ever experienced NOT being aware? Of course not ;). So you have nothing to compare it to, so no way to create a definition.

Yes, entirely private experiences like awareness or consciousness are not falsifiable, but that does not mean that they do not exist, not at all. Everyone has had an esperience of not being aware, for example during very deep sleep, anesthesia or during the billions of years when we were not yet born. What's the point of life-extension if one does not even notice the difference between being alive or dead? [thumb]

#19 nefastor

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Posted 26 September 2007 - 09:54 AM

Yes, entirely private experiences like awareness or consciousness are not falsifiable, but that does not mean that they do not exist, not at all.


I'm gonna have to side with Tamalak : in computer science we ask the question, "if I write a program that says it is self-aware, how would someone tell the difference with a person saying the same thing ?"

Take the DARPA Grand Challenge race : it can only be won by robots that are aware of the terrain they are on, and exhibit a survival instinct balanced with the concept of duty in doing their driving choices. You see them drive and pass each other, you'd swear there's a fully aware human driving them.

Tamalak is right, I think. For all we know, our self-awareness is just a side effect of our genetic programming : you have to be able to know what's you and what's not you when trying to survive and reproduce in the real world. That may well be the only purpose to self-awareness.

Nefastor

#20 platypus

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Posted 26 September 2007 - 10:40 AM

Don't confuse awareness with self-awareness please. To be "aware" is to be "awake", for the lack of a better word.

#21 electric buddha

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Posted 26 September 2007 - 05:04 PM

you have to be able to know what's you and what's not you when trying to survive and reproduce in the real world. That may well be the only purpose to self-awareness.


Awareness, I'd agree. But self-awarenience enough with other members ofess, I'd add on that it seems fairly exclusive to social animals. I could easily be wrong, but off the top of my head I don't think there's much evidence for it in any animal which doesn't exist in a cooperative setting with others of its species. Though it could simply be that the methods we use, mirror test and such, are only useful in animals that have exper their kind to add in that additional clue and show up as a positive for us.

#22 nefastor

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Posted 27 September 2007 - 04:13 PM

Don't confuse awareness with self-awareness please.


You can't have self-awareness without awareness, so it doesn't really change anything to what I wrote. A vending machine is aware of its own contents and of what coins are given to it.

I think awareness is overrated. You defined it as (or compared it to) being awake, but in reality is the ability to react differently to differently things. Furniture isn't aware because it won't flee when your house is on fire. A home alarm is aware because it will react to intruders but not to furniture.

There's simply degrees of awareness, and humans have a higher degree of it (in general) as their creations, although we often create machines that are more aware of certain specific things than us : my oscilloscope can detect and record a voltage spike of a few millivolts over a high-frequency signal. The best I can do on my own is lick a battery to tell if it still has some juice.

As Electric Buddha suggests in his post, awareness may be a different thing for other species than us, and I think it certainly is. For instance ants are aware of vegetation and certain soil characteristics, but I doubt they are aware of the galaxies.

I'd say awareness is the first step of intelligent behavior : if you're unaware of something, you can't act in response to it. So, again, I'm sticking with Tamalak : awareness is an illusion, it's only a fundamental, inherent mechanism of life such as gathering energy and reproducing.

Nefastor

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#23 platypus

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Posted 28 September 2007 - 09:41 AM

Don't confuse awareness with self-awareness please.


You can't have self-awareness without awareness, so it doesn't really change anything to what I wrote. A vending machine is aware of its own contents and of what coins are given to it.

Why would a vending machine be more conscious than a rock? It seems plausible that consciousness is a property of certain but not all configurations of matter, I'd say that today only nervous systems possess consciousness.

I think awareness is overrated. You defined it as (or compared it to) being awake, but in reality is the ability to react differently to differently things. Furniture isn't aware because it won't flee when your house is on fire. A home alarm is aware because it will react to intruders but not to furniture.

The logical consequence of your position is that even atoms can be said to be conscious/aware, because they react differently to different things. It's a valid position but I'm not sure if I find it believable. It would solve some philosophical problems though.




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