New Brain Maps Can Predict Behaviors | Hacker News Reader

New Brain Maps Can Predict Behaviors

quantamagazine.org

60 pointstheafh15 comments

In worms. A neuron was identified as playing a role in turning and, by eliminating that neuron, a worm was prevented from turning.

The headline and intro to the article gives the intentionally misleading impression that this is a human finding. It is not.

The opening 3D model is described as "neurons running through cortical layer 5 of a mammalian brain" and the word "worm" doesn't appear until the bottom of the 4th paragraph. These editors likely pride themselves in their Olympic-level metal gymnastics...

Another fun one is the cricket. Its nerve system contains a single interneuron that inhibits auditory processing during its own chirp[0].

[0]: http://www.wormweb.org/gapfree/files/Poulet_2006_Science.pdf

for me the clickbait title had the opposite (of their intended) effect. I was going to pass until I saw your comment that it's about "worms", which is actually interesting and if they are making claims about worms, it passes my bullshit test. I understand why people use clickbait titles, but I feel it ill-serves them by attracting the wrong kind of audience.

> I understand why people use clickbait titles, but I feel it ill-serves them by attracting the wrong kind of audience.

That assumes they have an interest in attracting the "right kind" of audience. Most publications just want an audience, any audience, full stop.

Clickbait is a common complaint and not without merit. I wonder how difficult / useful it would be to integrate something like smmry.com, so we can get a 1-sentence summary (this is the same tool reddit's "autotldr" bot uses).

It generated the following single sentence summary of the article, which I think combined with the title at least in this instance adds valuable context as to whether the rest of the article is worth clicking through to read:

"The resulting map of brain activity was so pronounced and consistent between the eight worms used in the study that they could use it to predict the behaviors of a ninth worm, explained Vladislav Susoy, a neuroscientist and first author of the study."

https://smmry.com/https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-brain-m...

edit: sorry for being meta / off topic, just a random thought.

Quanta always has this clickbait titles, that's why I stopped reading it.

Yes, it’s always funny when people hate “the game”.

They could charge money and be less commercial but then everyone would complain about a paywall.

The world is the way it is because we made it that way. Our behavior, our limitations, motivations, etc.

Hopefully, we “evolve” at some point but until we better understand ourselves, it’s unlikely.

It’s actually quite difficult to understand all of our biases. Wish I had started earlier in life. We are not rational, by a long shot.

In the meantime, Quanta is, hopefully, providing much needed science to a more general audience, which the world badly needs.

At least they could be more creative like Futurism absurdism.

Connectomes require not-so-accessible equipment such as fMRI or MRI machines. Nevertheless, the best way to visualize it in my opinion is via the Brainstorm package (created by University of Southern California) in MATLAB.

Honestly, the holy grail is really here and it is open sourced. It only requires EEG: https://direct.mit.edu/neco/article-abstract/33/4/967/97477/...

You can use FreeEEG32 with the prior link, which is coming out very soon (I spend a lot of time with the discord chat people who created this system): https://www.crowdsupply.com/neuroidss/freeeeg32

To use dry active electrodes (in lieu of wet electrodes—aka gel in your hair) with FreeEEG32, you can make your own EEG cap with dry electrodes—using this page to figure it out: https://hackaday.io/project/13285-openld-lucid-dreaming-rese...

The article is about micro-scale connectomes where each connection from each neuron to another neuron is identified. This is done using Electron Microscopes at nanometer resolution imaging. You are referring to fMRI/MRI based macro-scale connectomes where connection resolution is at the scales of thousands of neurons without any knowledge to wiring diagram at single-neuron resolution.

Any chance you have a link to the full paper in that first source?

I don’t have a copy that I can redistribute online.

However the repo is found via here: https://github.com/gretatuckute

I thought this article was more about connectome research as a whole rather than a single worm paper. (Side note: one thing about worm brains is that their neurons don't have sodium channels -- which mammalian brains do and they wouldn't function without)

I'm not a glia scientist (those who study the cells that support neurons), but one thing systems neuroscience seems to largely avoid is the role of glia on signal transmission, processing, and the like.

"but only a little better than we could already achieve without connectomes and only in worms"

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