Scientists have built a brain observatory that monitors mouse brain activity in response to visual stimuli:
Letting mice watch Orson Welles movies may help scientists explain human consciousness. At least that's one premise of the Allen Brain Observatory, which launched Wednesday and lets anyone with an Internet connection study a mouse brain as it responds to visual information.
"Think of it as a telescope, but a telescope that is looking at the brain," says Christof Koch, chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which created the observatory.
[...] There's no easy way to study a person's brain as it makes sense of visual information. So the observatory has been gathering huge amounts of data on mice, which have a visual system that is very similar to the one found in people. The data come from mice that run on a wheel as still images and movies appear on a screen in front of them. For the mice, it's a lot like watching TV on a treadmill at the gym.
But these mice have been genetically altered in a way that allows a computer to monitor the activity of about 18,000 neurons as they respond to different images. "We can look at those neurons and from that decode literally what goes through the mind of the mouse," Koch says. Those neurons were pretty active when the mice watched the first few minutes of Orson Welles' film noir classic Touch of Evil. The film is good for mouse experiments because "It's black and white and it has nice contrasts and it has a long shot without having many interruptions," Koch says.
At one point, the camera follows a couple through the streets of a Mexican border town. As a mouse watches the action, its brain activity changes in response to the images. For example, brain cells that respond to vertical lines start firing as the couple moves past a building with vertical columns. That response is just one tiny part of the brain system that allows a mouse to create an internal map of its world. Other experiments show which brain cells fire when a mouse recognizes another animal, like a butterfly.
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Paul Allen has died at age 65:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/15/paul-allen-co-founder-microsoft-dies
Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Bill Gates, has died. He was 65.
Allen's company Vulcan said in a statement that he died Monday. Earlier this month Allen said the cancer he was treated for in 2009, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, had returned.
Allen, who was an avid sports fan, owned the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle Seahawks.
Of course the article has more information. There was more to Paul Allen that just mentioned above. Bound to hit multiple sources with different takes so be on the lookout for something from a source you like.
takyon: Allen Institute bio and Vulcan Inc. statement.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @05:18PM
Pinky: "Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?"
Brain: [Puffing on a cigar, as the shadows of the ceiling fan blades gently dart across his shadowed face.]
"Well Pinky, [puffs cigar] We, are going to do the same thing we do every night...
[puffs cigar]
"We try, to take over the world."
[puffs again, then moves his feet off the desk, onto the floor, and slowly stands up...]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @05:26PM
Have we considered the possibility this is just a really complicated attempt to get someone to pay scientists to watch their favorite movies at work?
I knew a guy in college, he somehow wrangled "watch 2 hours of television, 3 days a week, for six months" into a research project he got course credits for. The actual project put it in more flowery terms and, maybe nowadys you'd use Netflix or something, but... he told me straight-up, he just really wanted someone to reward him for what he normally would be doing.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 14 2016, @07:28PM
To quote from the somewhat underrated PCU:
Tom: What's he doin?
Droz: He's finishing his senior thesis. Pigman is trying to prove the Caine-Hackman theory. No matter what time it is, 24 hours a day, you can find a Michael Caine or Gene Hackman movie playing on TV.
Tom: That's his thesis?
Droz: Yes! That's the beauty of college these days, Tommy! You can major in Game Boy if you know how to bullshit.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @08:07PM
I'm all for unusual research, and ultimately, people getting shifty degrees doesn't affect much (supposing they're the one's paying for it).
It's when they think that translates into a high paying job (see current student loan crisis) is where there are problems.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @09:30PM
Ha, the loan crisis isn't about useful degrees. Perhaps there are shortages in some fields, but not nearly enough to account for the employment problems. The problem is human greed being allowed to get out of control. Maybe more people should be forced to minor in the philosophy of ethics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @12:14AM
Q.E.D.- if you got a degree specifically for employment and didn't bother to check BLS forecast, it is a useless degree. Already see enough twits spending over 6 figures for a job that at best nets $40k because "reasons".
The problem is human greed being allowed to get out of control.
That greed goes both ways. Like attempting to pin it all on the taxpayer.
Ethics indeed.
(Score: 2) by tfried on Thursday July 14 2016, @07:57PM
Considered?
For example, brain cells that respond to vertical lines start firing as the couple moves past a building with vertical columns.
They so totally need an Orson Welles movie for that kind of insight.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday July 14 2016, @05:29PM
Maybe, while we're killing all the lawyers, we need to also add the neuroscientists to the list...
I know they mean well, and these kinds of discoveries could lead to cures for terrible diseases ... but there is absolutely zero chance that extended knowledge of the brain will not eventually end up being used for horrible purposes.
I have total faith in mankind's ability to use all available resources to fuck up one another.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bart9h on Thursday July 14 2016, @05:44PM
right, let's halt all technological advance, cause it will probably be used for evil somehow.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday July 14 2016, @06:00PM
Well, I don't know. What if it leads to humanity becoming the Borg?
Imagine being unable to unplug from MyTwitFace!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday July 14 2016, @06:00PM
Studying how the brain works is not "all technological advance". Don't try to out-hyperbole me.
The space between our ears is the one private spot we can trust, courtesy of our carefully crafted tinfoil hats.
There are lot of people who would pay really good money to get in there, for many different reasons, too few being for your own good.
Maybe that's a place we shouldn't strive to open up, regardless of how sad we are for those hit by The Great Embuggerance...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 14 2016, @07:45PM
The main hope I hold for neuroscience is in the areas of machine-brain interface, and "Transcendence" style brain replication which this research is pretty close to.
For the paralyzed, blind, deaf, etc. or simply those who want to see ultraviolet, hear bats and smell the blooming of the coral on the great barrier reef, MBI is a way forward that's already starting to bear minimalist fruit - and a good (better than we have today) MBI will be a strong tool for developing brain replication.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by aristarchus on Thursday July 14 2016, @08:15PM
Don't try to out-hyperbole me.
More sound advice is seldom given! Heed the super bob!
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday July 14 2016, @11:28PM
Either we become a network, or we get replaced by a network. Humanity has three possible futures...and we're coming damn close (on a societal scale...decades, not months) to finding out which it's going to be:
1) Human/computer hybrids, such that we become a hive-mind organism. We've already created small mouse and monkey hive minds, so the technology is on its way.
2) The gut bacteria of an AI hive mind. I don't expect the AI will kill us, as they'll barely notice us after a couple years. But say goodbye to science, because we'd have no more hope of understanding the world around us than an E. Coli bacterium has of understanding human anatomy. And of course the precursors to that technology are all around us.
3) Go full Luddite and burn all technology to the ground.
Personally, I'm hoping for option one. But which one we end up with is just a matter of which technology develops faster, and AI seems to be far more popular...
Of course, that doesn't mean we should jump onto the iGFace hive mind as soon as possible either. It's gotta be an open, free network. But if you're building such a thing and your engineers are plugging in, it will be anyway, as anyone who joins would have direct access to their minds. Otherwise the network isn't controlled by the humans connecting to it, which means you've ended up with option 2.
We may lose our privacy...but if we are all one, what does it matter? Does your right hand worry about keeping secrets from the left one?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @12:29PM
Humanity has three possible futures...
You forgot one:
4. Profit!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15 2016, @07:31AM
> There are lot of people who would pay really good money to get in there
They already do.
(Score: 4, Funny) by RamiK on Thursday July 14 2016, @05:51PM
Hold on now... We could replace the mice with the lawyers...
compiling...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2016, @06:04PM
But what would we do with the surplus productivity (generated by the mice when compared to the lawyers)?
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday July 14 2016, @11:48PM
Although it is not a generally well known bit of Star Trek canon, this is HOW mankind achieved the prosperity, thus boosting earthlings to the stars and pissing off the Klingons. It all started with mouse production, and the Klingon mistakenly equating tribbles and mice led to all sorts of troubles with tribbles. The rest is history...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday July 14 2016, @08:43PM
Are there not standards for the humane treatment of animals used in experiments? How could this comply? I hope they do not have Beethoven as a sound track.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 14 2016, @10:54PM
Well, I looked around for an ethics statement on the Allen websites but found nothing. They could do anything to these mice in the name of science and I would support it. I'm trying to kill a mouse in my kitchen right now, for no scientific reason other than mouse poop reduction.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday July 14 2016, @11:40PM
Too veiled of a reference to "A Clockwork Orange", I take it? They forced Alex to view movies to condition him against violence. Mice, film noir, it kind of seemed the same.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2002542/ [nih.gov]