The first wiring map of an insect's brain hints at incredible complexity
npr.org
npr.org
548,000 connections seems pretty low to me thinking of the complex behaviour these animals are capable of. And this shows that there's a lot of elements that we are lacking in our approach to artificial intelligence; I guess for one, although we say 548k connections each of these connections is modulated in many ways. Two neurons can communicate through different chemicals which in turn will result in different reactions.
When one neuron fires a signal to the next neuron there is a lot that goes on in the receiver to either trigger or not trigger the response. Type of neurotransmitter, amount of neurotransmitter, previous signals that the neuron has received, amount of times the neuron has fired in the past; as well as other environmental factors. This means just one synapse between two neurons is actually an extremely complex model of interaction in itself... it's a very non linear process that's modulated by countless complex relationships.
This is really great work because it gives a light on distributions of neurons (despite all the complexity, it's still possible to group and classify neurons) and this could be used to generate new artificial neural networks that might share some of this complexity. Though, I haven't really been following artificial neural network research so I imagine they already are doing similar things. Great stuff, thanks for sharing.
Back in the day when social media was being seeded everyone would talk about multiplyung value for every person added. And there would be arguments about how large it can get before value drops off due to the Dunbar number etc. Since insect brains have been around much longer than our chimp brains maybe they are more optimised.
I mean we see all this marvelous complexity from neurons and humans... How interconnected are we? There's a lot of science fiction and fiction in general that deals with collective consciousness and it's all really cool. One of my favourite topics!
I'm still not sure where they come from but I reckon they breed amongst dead tree leaves—a lot which surround my property and it's nigh on impossible to completely eliminate them.
There's no doubt that Drosophila is one of nature's greatest success stories, they're smart, they learn quickly and just about anything I do barely distracts them from their purposeful goal of landing on something I'm eating or invading a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table.
Over the years I've had plenty of opportunity to watch and study my enemies' behavior as they take control of my kitchen and I never cease to be amazed at how such tiny brains which are no bigger than a poppyseed can muster so much intelligence. Methinks that if I could scale that concentrated intelligence for my own brain then I'd be a genius.
I'm not a bit surprised that Drosophila's brain sports incredible complexity. Anyone who has studied the animal for more than five minutes would have to arrive at that conclusion.