Comment by aurellem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aurellem | Hacker News Reader

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We’re proud of the progress we’ve made so far—demonstrating that the ultrastructure (connectome) is preserved. The connectome is a necessary starting point upon which models of the brain can be built [0]. We intend to continue researching and validating preservation of important biomolecules as we explore the efficacy limits of ASC. We intend to develop these tools on a timeline to allow proper feedback from the neuroscience community. I certainly don’t want our marketing to imply that we have near-term or even specific plans to offer anything commercially for clinical use, so I will read through our website again and try to find areas where one can get the wrong idea.

[0] From https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/c-elegans-connect...: “Some people say we don't know anything about how C. elegans's brain works and I am like, 'Yes, we do!'" says Cornelia Bargmann of The Rockefeller University, who has studied the nematode for more than two decades and attended the Columbia debate. "A lot of what we know about C elegans's rapid behaviors we have learned through and with the connectome. Every time we do an experiment, we look at those wiring diagrams and use them as a starting point for generating hypotheses."

sigh, what about the active patterns, yo. brains aren't static connections of neurons when they're alive.

they have hojillions of firing patterns, some of which are cyclical and constant, other of which are transient and tiny. these stop when the brain is dead. you're not gonna capture these from a dead brain.

what if there's some essential aspect of consciousness that's depending on circles of five or six neurons holding a pattern of action potentials in perpetuity?

i doubt that this is the case, but if it is, cracking the connectome -- which is already an achievement that would require an effort greater than the human genome project -- wouldn't be very helpful at all.

oh yeah, and as far as preserving those circuits go, do you have a solution for clearing neurons from excess sodium or potassium after it accumulates there during death? depending on which ion pump fails from lack of energy first (and my bet is that it's the sodium-potassium ion pump, because it's responsible for some absurd percentage of the body's total energy usage), neurons could very easily be left logjammed with a glut of charged particles that prohibits making action potentials in any capacity even when energy becomes available. you don't wanna be assuming that all those excess ions are signal when they're noise.

finally: have you considered your philosophical disposition wrt substance dualism or materialism? you're gonna have to have a damn good case for some philosophical angle when dennett comes a knockin or he'll immolate your entire project.

You can electroshock a brain, completely scramble the "active patterns" and the person will... well, reboot, for lack of a better term. If you could get the weights without activity, I see no reason you couldn't just initialize in a random state and let it figure itself out. Figuring out the weights is a technical problem, but technical problems are made to be solved.

Finally, dualism is juvenile bullshit. A neuroscientist who thought the mind WASN'T the brain would be absolutely useless.

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