/sci/ - Science & Math

magnets

We know mechanically how the brain works, and what certain sections are for, and which neurotransmitters kind of do what.
But sleep and consciousness are still being determined.

>>3756680
So we know next to nothing then? How is this possible? How do we not have at least a perfectly functioning worm brain reverse engineered (or at least fucking simulated)?? How complicated can it be?

bump

>>3756693
Pretty damn complicated, it seems.

Don't worry, though, there are plenty of complicated systems we don't quite understand.

>>3756858
It just makes me want to weep and die. Let say we devoted 100% of scientific research to understanding the brain and building a copy (hypothetical situation here) it could then possibly improve itself as much as it can or we could make enough of them so that we could know all that a group of neurons can know.
I feel like we're so close but so frustratingly far away.

>>3756870

It's not the destination, bro. It's the journey.

>>3756870

Wow. That's very naive, bro.

>>3756892
If in 30 years we don't completely understand the workings of the brain I'm going on a rampage. I swear I'll make 9/11 look like a minor structural mishap.

>>3756870

The brain is immensely complicated, a situation which is also troubled by the fact that you are observing a system that you are a part of, and by the fact that ethics are important in science.
It is unethical to take humans and damage different parts of their brains until you understand what every tiny neuron does. It is also unethical to open up a living human's brain and zap specific areas until you understand where every tiny connection is. So you have to go at it in less forward ways. On top of that, you have a Gestalt issue, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Don't be mad that science doesn't have all the answers yet. Be glad that you have the opportunity to help find those answers.

>>3756912

I'll do it in five.

>>3756912
>in 30 years you'll either be a hive mind or a radical fool.

>>3756916
But we don't even know how a rats brain functions. Why is it that our current information science is inadequate to describe the human brain? And quite frankly I'm not intelligent enough to make serious contributions to science directly.

>>3756921
I'm already a radical fool.

>>3756935
same reason people think the next president of the united states will be different from the last.

Reductionism does not explain wholism in any rationally deductive manner. (Circular much?)

>>3756942
So, either you'll be assimilated, or you'll stay the same.

gg

>>3756935

Think of your average computer, now multiply that by a billion.

That should give some idea of the complexity of the brain.

>>3756945
Are you implying that the brain is only functional as a whole and therefore you are unable to break it into parts? Because I'm pretty sure thats not the case. Once you have a template for neurons then you move to interneuron connections, then onto groups of neurons.

The brain is a complex series of logic gates arranged in perfect harmony to create an intelligent mind. Neurons are intricately connected, and the paths of neurons which light up are representative of your 'thoughts.' The information being expressed within your brain. You think about food, and the food-related parts of your brain light up. Then maybe some connected parts light up, like smells or memories of food. Ect, ect. Your mind is the expression of what these neurons are doing, like the image on your computer screen is an expression of what's happening in your computer.

For the sake of proximity and organization, the neurons having to do with related functions are usually grouped together. This is why we have different 'parts' of the brain with different functions.

It's a very complex system which has evolved over a very long time, like a thread that's tangled in 100 trillion knots. These problems are only made worse by the fact that imaging technology is not yet accurate enough to track the activity of single neurons, only showing large patches of activity. As medical technology and our computing ability grows, I think we'll begin to reach a much more definitive understanding of the brain.

pic related - it's my brain.

>>3756980
Your picture inspired me to post a picture of my brain. This is an old picture (middle school possibly?).

>>3756935

You don't need to be a super brainiac to be a scientist.
Anyone can do science if they like it and they're willing to put in effort.

>Why is it that our current information science is inadequate to describe the human brain?
That's like asking "why is it that our current information science is inadequate to describe the sub-atomic scale?"
We don't have all the evidence. We need to gather more.
Seriously, you just sound like you're mad that we don't know 100% of everything ever yet. Consider how far humans have come in the past 100 years, and then consider how much time had passed between when humans first started making observations about the cosmos and when geocentric theory was replaced.

To be honest, we will never have all of the evidence for every possible thing ever, but that shouldn't be cause for despair.

>>3756966
A modern computer isn't that complicated though when you abstract it. Its turing machineish. I suppose that the brain could come programmed with a lot of meta knowledge already which would make it complicated, but shouldn't there be some major principle underlying how it functions? I mean it had to evolve step by step and therefor should have some simple data structures that it uses over and over again for new knowledge.

>>3756969
No, I'm implying that the president of the united states has an easier campaigning before he becomes president because he is completely unaware of what i means to be president.

I'm insinuating that mere reductionism does not lead to a fruitful understanding that has predictive power if you limit your idea of consciousness to just the brain.

Your brain lives in a increasingly expanding level of environments that have a ginormous amount of short to long term feedback loops. If all you're doing is trying to map neuronal activity, you're missing the conflagration of events.

I ain't saying it isn't possible, but to pretend that 1000km long interconnected network just needs to be mapped out for us to understand it, is absurd.

>>3756980
>>3756992

Oooh maaan, I so jelly.

pic related, my current status

>>3756992
It's an MRI and I had some sort of retainer like thing in my mouth. That's why the mouth looks insane.

>>3756980
That cannot be. Everything cannot be perfectly arranged in the perfect structure to process information, because many neurons die all the time in our brains and people can sustain massive head injury and still function well (using you knot analogy, chopping a knot in half will most likely lead to the knot falling apart but not so for a human brain). There has to be clear and simple phenomenon supervening on neural circuits in order for the brain to work I think.

>>3756980
>>3756992

Why did you guys get MRIs?

>>3756980
Neurons arn't intricately connected, their more practically smashed together, in a survival of fitness.

In the early stages of brain development and nerve development, the human body goes for an anything and everything solution.

In the end, neurons and nerves survive that get feedback, and those that die get none.

It may look intricate, but the environment formulated the plan, not the brain itself.

>>3756993
It is definitely cause for dispair because if I had been born just twenty years later I could potentially see much more, let alone a hundred years later. How can you stomach the thought of dying without even understanding what exactly 'you' were in the first place???

>>3756992
For some reason, that picture is creeping me out.

>>3756994
>shouldn't there be some major principle underlying how it functions
We already know that.
Sensory input enters the brain. Physical and chemical pathways flip on the corresponding neurons. These neurons send chemicals to other neurons to interpret the information.
That is how the brain works, in a very simple, overall, generalizable explanation.

>I mean it had to evolve step by step and therefor should have some simple data structures that it uses over and over again for new knowledge.

You ever hear of the limbic system? It has been considered the most evolutionarily ancient structure of the human brain. (although apparently there is some new evidence about this which could challenge that view) It plays a role in many things your brain is required for, such as emotion, long term memory, smell, behavior, and whatever else wikipedia says it plays a role in.
And, you forget, the only actual live brains we have that can be studied are in organisms that have been evolving just as long as humans have, so any comparison needs to be mediated by the fact that all brains have been evolving since there was the very first cell that was similar to a neuron.

>>3756992
The eyeballs are kinda freaking me out, man
>>3756994
This sounds really reasonable. It would make sense for the brain to follow the same pattern over and over again throughout development.

>>3756994

The brain has to do a lot of things that computers don't. There are lots of things that the brain does with ease but we struggle to reproduce, like recognizing shapes and moving through an environment. It's also important to remember that computer chips are designed, so they're very structured and orderly. Neurons are tangled, extending in all directions, with trillions of interconnections between them. It's similar to the problem of mapping the human genome - without technological assistance, it's almost impossible to get a clear picture of things.

pic related - my brain again.

>>3757044
Easy, stop thinking you're more than what you are to begin with.

>Thats for religionists.

Here's the difference between a brain and a computer guys:

a computer can have trillions and trillions of those boolean switches, but the hierarchy of each individual switch is all pre-determined: 8 bites to a byte, stacks and stacks of those, each variable gets 1 bit, etc.

When software developers make a program, they map out a set of discrete instructions, basically forming a relationship between different boolean values.

The human brain is a complicated yet meaningful relationship existing as the network of trillions of different neurons all connecting to different neurons around it in various ways.

Some patterns transverse the entire brain , some only a fraction of a nano-meter.

Synergism, etc. You fellas better bone up on your math and physics in college.

>>3757055

>dat optic chiasma
>dem inferior parietal lobes

>>3757057
That's what I'm saying. If I understood the brain I'd completely understand myself (the myself that is separate from my environment)

>>3757044
>How can you stomach the thought of dying without even understanding what exactly 'you' were in the first place

I do know what I am, though. You mistake "what you are" for "how every single system in you works." Do you know intricately how the endocrine system works? Do you know intricately how the digestive system works? Why aren't you as upset about knowledge that you haven't chosen to find as knowledge that hasn't been found by anyone yet? To you, they're both unknowns. What is the difference?

>>3757028
It REALLY depends on which part of the brain is injured. If your temporal lobe is damaged, your personality changes drastically. If you require split-brain surgery, yeah you can still live and function, but it will be drastically different than before. And brain surgery is still a somewhat risky endeavor because damage to certain areas is much more detrimental than damage to other areas.

>>3757068
But how would you understand yourself understanding yourself?

>>3756999
Alright then I'd like to narrow the scope for the sake of argument then. I'd like to understand how the brain works when writing words, doing advanced math, and coming up with new ideas (sorry to be so vague). I could give a shit about all the "experiences" in the environment. I want to know how a brain reflects upon its world.

>>3757031
I was very short for my age when I was little. They thought I might have had something wrong with my pituitary gland. There wasn't a problem. I was just short for my age and a late bloomer. I'm 5'4 now which is still short, but they were expecting me to be a max of 5'0 at the time.

>>3757046
Maybe due to my retainer thing which made my mouth look insane.

>>3757051
Yeah, they freak me out too.

>>3757076
I could care less about my digestive system and endocrine system. I want to know about the seat of consciousness and the faculties it uses to understand its world, ie: the brain. Know that and you know what a human mind really is do you not?

>>3757089

I was, am, and will always be short for my age. But that's genes for you. My mom's short, my dad's short, their parent's are short, their parents' parents were short.

>>3757083
When writing words, the areas of your brain responsible for muscle movement, memory, and anything to do with language, and the concepts you are writing about, are activated.
When doing advanced math, the areas of your brain which correspond to your understanding of the mathematical concepts involved are activated.
There was a thread on /sci/ earlier about how 'random' neuronal firings may play a role in creativity. I'll see if I can dig up the link for you. But it's been dead a while, so only revive it if you are actually going to post in it, because probably most of those people have left.

>>3757104
There is no distinction between brain and mind. Brain is mind. Mind is brain. The. End.
Dualists need to GTF over it.

It's just strange to me that you would be okay with not knowing how fundamental systems of your body work, but the second it comes to how you process the information given to you by those systems, it's like it's a different ball game.
>I'll see if I can dig up the link for you.
Here it is
>>3755024

>>3757116
I don't particularly care which parts of my brain are active. That's like saying when typing a keyboard is active and when navigating a screen a mouse and screen are active. I want to know how and why these things actually work, but more so how they go about finding ways that work. There must be supervening principles right??

>>3757083
Hate to break it to you, but there is no...soul.

Every 'experience' you have is just as useful to your ability to conjugate or derive, as your ability to remember 2 plus 2.

This is the point of the argument. Reductionism will not be an easy (if possible) road to understanding the brain.

It is more likely that a completely unrelated construct, such as an AI will be more informative than some sort of neuronal map.

>>3757104
No.

That's like saying:

"I like soup. All i need to do is eat the individual ingrediants, and I will enjoy soup."

>>3757126
I understand that mind = brain. The reason I asked whether it was was to see if you thought that it was.
And isn't it obvious why I care so much more about the brain than the other tissue that even basic barely cognizant beings also possess? The brain is about to understand and advance its understanding of both itself and the universe around itself (I'm not about to go into what "understanding" is because I have no idea how a brain understands).

>>3757145

>If you like SOUP so much, why don't you marry SOUP?

I prefer to invoke the complementary principle - suppose two systems exist in the universe, your brain and everything else. There is a direct correspondence between the two such that the state of either one determines the state of the other. Rather than looking at your brain, look at everything else in reality - it's just a mirror image.

>>3757157

Terrible.

>>3757153
>that even basic barely cognizant beings also possess

Woah. Woah. Woah.
Did you seriously just go there?
Ants invented agriculture and domesticated another species long before humans ever even thought about doing so.
Naturally other apes are very intelligent, and highly cognizant, but do you realize that corvids and cephalopods also exhibit extraordinarily high levels of intelligence are are extremely apt at problem solving and tool use?
Besides, other animals have brains too. Their brains have been evolving just as long as ours have, and other organisms have drastically different ways of understanding the world around them.
Don't be so quick to throw yourself in front of the "humans are naturally more advanced and better than every other species" bus. Don't kid yourself into thinking humans are the only creatures that understand things.

The brain understands through sensory input, which is translated into chemical signals. Information is literally physically stored in connections, and the ease of accessibility is controlled by the strength of the storage, which is controlled by the amount of surface area that any axon attaches to any dendrite.
There really isn't anything more that can be said about it beyond "it's chemicals" at this point in our current level of understanding.

>>3757139
I don't know where in that message you saw that I believe in anything remotely like a soul. I do, however, believe in meta knowledge and supervenient systems, an understanding of which would make a neural map of the brain unnecessary.
I think that there must be some way to separate our brains and their workings from the chaotic environment. There must be some underlying principles by which it organizes its "data" to understand its world such that it can genuinely "understand" things about its world well enough to describe/create an algorithm modeling/make contributions to what it understands.

>>3757175

I know. But I had to. You have no idea how long I have waited to do that. Would you like to hear a potassium joke instead? It's not much better.

>>3757181
If it was that simple, don't you think we would have done so already?
"Data" is compartmentalized into brain regions, but there is a lot of communication required between the audio, visual, judgment, etc. areas of our brain.

>>3757145
The human body is compartmentalized. Its perfectly reasonable to understand the workings of one part without completely understanding all of the others. If I misunderstood you and you were criticizing my interest in the mind over the body I'd like to ask you a simple question: whats more interesting, Einstein understanding relativity or his ass shitting a wurst? :P

>>3757174
Thats a generalization to work with.

If you want the true angle, each layer from the neuron to the universe is surrounded with an environmental bubble.

Depending on the size, and we can just say physical size (the shape of it matters more), it expands.

As it expands, it incompasses groups (as the other poster was expounding upon), then loops, then internal sensory inputer (pain receptors, stomach, tiredness, etc), external sensory, then comes the tricky bits.

At the level which sensory input is a state, you start dropping in the sort of attachment that is easily defineable. But to us it's simple, it's the clothes we wear, the smells we're surrounded by (and choose to be surrounded by), the information we choose to process and that which we ignored, it's the entropy we create, and, in humans, it's the pathological desire to understand one another that drives manipulation of other levels.

Every level has a feedback loop, and every feedback loop has a timing from milliseconds to...eons if you want to expand the bubble to encompassess similar genetic material, culture, society, and perhaps extra solar hiave mind jazz.

>>3757191

>Would you like to hear a potassium joke instead?

NaBro, I'd rather talk about sodium hypobromite.

>>3757198
Gemans have a high degree of interest in shit, and seeing as einstein was german, he would likely say what comes out of one's ass is just as important as what goes into ones mind.

>>3757202

What is the point of that picture?

To simulate Earth's weather conditions on gliese?

>>3757203
>>3757210

Both of those are well-played...

>>3757202
That sounds decently complex already.

>>3757215
To transfer information faster than light.

>>3757180
I don't know why you're assuming that I was insulting other animals' brains rather than non-brain tissue. But I'll bite.
I do understand that animals brains are incredibly amazing and given a few more concepts could be just as great as ours (I'm an avid ant farmer (myrmecologist if I may be so bold)) but I wouldn't go as far to say that their minds aren't shit in comparison to ours. I am a proud speciesist but that is completely beside the point.

>>3757191
Yes I understand its very likely incredibly complex but I also think that there is a chance that we simply do not understand the simple principles that the brain uses without understanding its complexities. Again looking at an Intel chip you'd think it's amazingly complex (and it is) but once you get down and dirty and understand what it does in an abstract sense understanding every piece of the chip is unnecessary. Ask a computer scientist what a computer is and then ask an electrical engineer to build a computer for you. The former would have a much simpler, and for theoretical understanding, more useful explanation.

>>3757241
Except, the computer chip is highly ordered.

A brain's infrastructure is massively disordered.

Sure, evolution has widdled away at the efficiency, but the sheer level of redundancy the human brain is capable of it, impedes your simple attempts at reduction.

>>3757174
Clearly thats not the case though. If I ripped out your brain, hooked it up to machinery so that it gets no external neural stimulus whatsoever (lets say I also set it in a perfect vacuum in which there is no radiation or effects from outside gravity, its totally isolated) then I flashed an image of a complex question or dilemma, your brain could process this information and do things with it no computer program/algorithm designed ever has. It has something else there. Some methods it uses to solve problems and analyze things.

>>3757255
I'm totally fine with the brain being disordered on some level, in fact I welcome that assumption. There must be some way that the brain then makes order out of disorder, or some way that the disorder lends itself to a mind capable of understanding of order. That's what I want to understand. I think that there must be a way to understand this.
I mean come on guys this is /sci/ do you really think that the behavior of a lump of atoms is beyond explanation? That there is really nothing to the brain besides a reverberation of the chaos that exists outside of it?

>>3757258
I think you just argued that the brain is not an algorithmic process. I disagree with that assertion.

>>3756980
>>3756992
>>3757055

Oh, goodie! We're having a personal brain pictures thread? Allow me to contribute.

This is from my most recent seizure. Turns out I have a brain tumor! See it on the left side, there? Intriguing!

>>3757226
>even basic barely cognizant beings also possess
>even basic barely cognizant beings possess
>basic barely cognizant

That was where.
Any organism alive today has been evolving just as long as humans. Get this idea out of your head, if it's in tehre. Certain organisms may more closely resemble earlier forms, but they have still been evolving just as long.
Ants are cool. =) Kudos. I've very nearly bought an ant farm several times, but I'd want something more permanent than just a simple colony of workers.

>>3757241
We do understand the simple principles of the brain, though. Chemicals. Man, where's that neuroscience guy when you need him? He was a dopamine salesman the other day.... Anyway, the simple principle is chemicals. There are many, many, many chemicals, although there are approximately 4 main chemicals which are basically responsible for everything (dopamine being one of them). Just because we don't have a firm definition of consciousness or why we need to sleep doesn't mean that we need to scrap everything.
The brain was not designed logically and tidily like a computer chip. That other guys analogy before
>like a thread that's tangled in 100 trillion knots
is pretty much the best way to describe it. The only better way would be to say that you have 100 trillion small pieces of thread which are each all attached to each other in such a way that they can strengthen their attachment, detach and reattach under certain circumstances, and in order to determine which one is attached where, you cannot take it apart piece by piece and lay it out in a nice line. It wouldn't even make a nice line anyway, even if you could.

>>3757263

>laughing a serious ailment

Methinks that brain tumor is on the part of your brain that deals with humor.

Also, you're going to die...

>>3757262
Alright then what sort of process does it use? How does it go from input A to output B, I'd like to know every step along the way. I want to know every way that A is manipulated in the brain be it chaotic or otherwise. If its not following a set of instructions to process this information I'd like to know how exactly brains come up with fairly consistent results and how brains integrate information together. I'd at the very least like a clear, 100% scientific explanation for why it is impossible to understand the workings of a lump of matter called the brain.

>>3757272
Oops I thought you said disagree.
I do agree that that brain is algorithmic. I just think that we don't know all the algorithms it does use and if we did we'd understand the brain more or less.

>>3757269

I suppose the only thing that brings me comfort is that everyone is going to die eventually.

>>3757264
I see what you're getting at. Yes I would agree that most animals with similar body systems to our own (not a biologist so...) are fairly cognizant on a basic level, however when you look at it from a human perspective they are not because they don't analyze meta knowledge like we do.

I'm computer sciencey minded so I want to know how to build a human mind. I think that neurons shouldn't be much different from a processor, it must have some set algorithmic methods it uses to process received info. I think the difference is it does this in such a way that it works with other neurons to accomplish a task somehow (the restructuring is presumably just a way to change which other neurons it works with, or works at all). There must be some way that neurons do this, just like there is a process that a turing machine follows.

>>3757287
>I think that neurons shouldn't be much different from a processor,

Welp, that's where you're wrong.
Neurons aren't even binary. They can fire or not fire, but every neuron can package and send any one of a number of neurotransmitters along any of its axons.
If anything, the brain operates in base (number of neurotransmitters).
>Scientists have managed to identify over 100 neurotransmitters in the human brain alone, but evidence suggests we have significantly more than this number.
(http://www.wisegeek.com/how-many-neurotransmitters-are-there.htm))
Design a computer that operates on a base 100 system instead of binary, and then tell me how easy it is to understand a brain.

>>3757272
>I want I want answers

The full answer(s) might be had with some higher education. I am more than pleased to offer a list of the top 5 neuroscience graduate programs

University of California San Diego - Neurosciences (Graduate School)
Harvard University DMS - Neuroscience
Johns Hopkins University Neuroscience
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Neuroscience
University of Pennsylvania Neuroscience (Graduate School)

All of these schools are involved in _ongoing research_ into the mysteries of the brain, and may someday be able to answer in full your heart-felt questionings. Meanwhile, you can lend a hand

Good luck

>>3757303
Done. They're called memristors. Processing can be done on them.
I wasn't saying that neurons will function anything like processors but that they must be some kind of turing machine or something more limited than that. They must do some sort of data processing.

>>3757311
Sure. They have inputs and they have outputs.
The inputs change the electrical potential of the cell so that it is easier or more difficult for the cell to fire.
Once it reaches a specific electric potential, it fires.
The output depends on the input.

>>3757319
Then the actual data processing happens within circuits of neurons then? Since that's more along the line of simple operations on data than actual processing (dunno if I'm using the wrong terms in my ignorance).

>>3757311
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#Potential_applications
>dat second paragraph

Wow, they're being used to model neural networks.
Convergent thought, I guess...

>It was shown that the electronic circuit subjected to a train of periodic pulses learns and anticipates the next pulse to come
HOLY CRAP.
Why isn't this ALL OVER THE NEWS EVERYWHERE AND FOREVER?!
SELF-AWARE AI IS TO BE FOUND IN MEMRISTORS!

An ant brain contains 25,000,000,000,000,000,000, twenty five quintillion (2.5x10^19) atoms. You can't even comprehend that number. The number of millimeters around the circumference of Equator is only 1/623 millionth of that number. If you stacked that many US pennies up it would span 4.1 light years. Do you have any idea how much that is? How impossible it would ever be to even pretend to understand it? And atoms aren't even the smallest particles known. We have a long way to go.

>>3757336

I guess? Sorry. I've hit my limit on neural knowledge. I direct you to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron
I think this will help you understand a lot of the smaller mechanisms. But again, with understanding the whole brain, you've got this gestalt problem.

>>3757348

>implying we need to count all the atoms in a brain in order to understand it

whatisthisidon'teven

>>3757348
If we are able to understand 5 atoms why not be able to understand a mol of them?

A stimulus is detected by the nervous system and sent to the brain. Here, many regions of the brain involved in the detection light up. This is called an experience. Over time and repetition, synaptic connections are formed between these independent neurons; forming 'modules'. If the link becomes strong enough we may only require a percentage of the original stimulus to feel the whole/large amount of the original experience. In practice, it is via electrical stimulation that one neuron manages to excite all others in its memory module.

Short term memories are fragile and need constant affirmation or the neuronal connections will break down. Long term memory consolidation appears to happen largely during sleep. In brain scans testing short term versus long term memory it appears that the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are involved in long term recollection.

>>3757345
If you are being sincere then you finally understand my pain. We are so close but yet so far away. And there's a definite possibility that we will not understand the brain within our lifetimes.

>>3757365

I was being sincere.
This is amazing stuff.
Also
>In 2009, Massimiliano Di Ventra, Yuriy Pershin and Leon Chua co-wrote an article[47] extending the notion of memristive systems to capacitive and inductive elements in the form of memcapacitors and meminductors whose properties depend on the state and history of the system.
>properties depend on the state and history of the system.
That is exactly like the brain. What you are thinking right now depends on your frame of mind (state) and your past experiences (history).
Or maybe I am reading too much into it.

Honestly, though I don't think we're "so close but so far away." I think we're "so close."
You have to understand that any line of scientific inquiry branches into more and more lines of inquiry.

>>3757365
It's estimated that we will build a fully functional mechanical copy of a human mind in 9 years..
How old are you?

>>3757379
Yes this stuff is why I'm trying to be an electrical engineer.
I'd be lying if I said my ego wasn't involved somewhat. I feel that I am too puny and lazy to actually help in advancing amazing things like this, which is depressing.

>>3757393

I find computers fascinating, but don't have the time or the money to study both computer engineering and zoology, so I keep trying to get my friend to explain computers to me through the classes he takes.

>I feel that I am too puny and lazy to actually help in advancing amazing things like this

Nope. You would "stand on the shoulders of giants", as any scientist does. Any contribution is more than what was there before.

>>3757393
Don't worry, I'm going to get a Ph.D in economics because I can't into science.
Although I wish I was smart enough to help advance shit like this, nanotech, and terraformation.
>implying we're close to terra formation.

>>3757385
I hope that's the case but I'll believe it when I see it.
>>3757403
Study both. Screw getting a job!
>>3757407
Chances are I'll be stuck building some stupid failure android phone or something. There is no hope.

>>3757393
>I feel that I am too puny and lazy to actually help in advancing amazing things like this
>>3757407
>Although I wish I was smart enough to help advance shit like this

Who the fuck told you guys this bullcrap?
Anyone can be a scientist if you're interested in the area and willing to work. You (electrical engineer) have the capability to understand all of this biology stuff about neurons and brain nonsense, as demonstrated by this thread. And you (economist), I am sure have posted something on /sci/ to do with not-economics, or have been able to learn something from being here.

>>3757421
Reality told me this bro.
In the form of a 2.9 in a calculus class.

>>3757430
Fuck calculus.
It's usually a weed-out course if it's calc 1 or 2. A bad grade in calculus means nothing.

>>3757436
I hope so.
It was a nice discussion we had but I'm off for the night.

Nah. The brain is not a computer and it doesn't work on algorithms. There is no material object to compare the brain with. That's why it's so complex.

Also, information is not stored like on a harddisk or ROM, and there are no "bits of data". The brain is made of genetically regulated cells, which have many different roles and cooperate or compete depending on task. There's nothing to compare with what happens in the brain, that's why self-awareness is a unique emergent product of this world.

There is no easy way to understand the mind by understanding the brain. Even neuroscientists don't understand lots of things about the brain although they study it for years. In fact, there are many neuroscientists who don't understand what they find.

Ok, /sci/, whether you believe me or not, I'm a neuroscientist, exasperated by some of the responses on this thread. I feel, therefore, I need to respond with some important knowledge, both for the OP and for anyone else who continues to read this thread. By the way, I'd like to get inb4 any tl;dr, since this is the /sci/ board and therefore ought to have some anons with integrity!

The amount we know about the brain and how it works is staggering. Every month hundreds of new papers are published extending deeper our understanding of many aspects of neuroscience. We will know yet more about the contribution of some specific compound to the pathways leading to, let's say, transmitter release, receptor behaviour, gene expression, neurogensis, potentiation or depression of neuronal electric activity, metabolism or glial cell behaviour. Actually, gene expression and the influences on all the pharmacological pathways thereby influenced probably provides the biggest challenge, in terms of complexity, but there are forms of chaos and fractal mathematics that are very much helping these branches of research.

We can take apart one microscopic region of the brain and understand untold aspects of how it behaves, the electrical impulses, the chemical signals, and how it contributes to aspects of our macroscopic behaviour, such as memory formation, balance, vision or even cognition.

But this, to some extent, is the curse. It is not that we can not know the immense complexities that go to make up the brain. The greater problem is the sheer volume of what we do know. Noone can understand the libraries of information that we have already acquired about the brain. Even one synapse will provide an insurmountable challenge to most professors. Contrary to what we're taught in schools, a synapse is not a bridge, it's an amazingly complex intersection of release of many neurotransmitters, neurosteroids and ions, with systems of autoregulation, receptor expression and desensitisation that provides control over signal transduction. Each is unique and would require a powerful computer to successfully model.

So don't lose hope. We probably know enough to model a very simple brain, if we had software distributed across the internet to millions of willing volunteers, each node modelling a cell. It is feasible that the such a system might exist within the next century or two.

Bored by my own writing, I'll stop there. Chances of someone reading? slim.

>>3758096

I read it all, man. It's okay, bro.

>>3758096
read all as well man.
i don't believe you're a nueroscientist,
because this is 4chan
sounds like we just need einstein to piece it all together.

You can't figure out how the brain works because there are some super natural aspects to it that cannot be determined by any current instrument or method devised by science today.

That super natural thing is called a soul. Although you have not discovered it does not exist, it does.

OP here. Amazed to see this thread still lives.
>>3758096
Centuries? That's exactly my problem with this whole thing. What could be so complex about an individual neuron from a math/information science perspective that at least 1 neuron cannot be modeled now?

>>3760317
without wishing to deanon myself, i am a neuroscientist, currently at Imperial, done studies in MEG in Cardiff, MRS, and PET at the now defunct centre in Hammersmith. My first neuroscience post-grad was in Bristol. Believe me or not, I am now writing articles (and hopefully a book or two) about brain circuit modelling and AI. Wish me luck /sci/, most fail.

>>3760401
I think what I'm trying to say is that there are aspects of single neurons that currently prevent their modelling - gene expression is probably the most important of these. But we certainly have the computing power to do so, especially using a lot of modern non-linear mathematics. There are so many compounds and ion gradients in one cell to model successfully at the moment, but we're not far away. And remember, once we've got one cell down, we've got them all - it'll no longer be a matter of complexity, but a matter of resources.

Anyone claiming to have explained consciousness should be laughed off the playground.

in after troll pretends he believes in souls.

please don't take him seriously. ridiculous claims need to be ignored

Integrates sensory input and coordinate motor output to promote survival of the organism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RbPQG9WTZM