Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gptgpp 1193 days ago
Man... I just find neural connectomes so depressing.

It's like looking at the copper wiring on the motherboard, or the pins of the CPU, when what you really want is the logic from the networked gates (transistors).

Yet it seems we are many, many decades away from being able to extract that in any comprehensible or definitive way.

I need to stop reading neuroscience articles. There's always big proclamations, Like "the neural circuitry behind arithmetic has been discovered!" then you dig into the meat and it's mostly guesswork and hypothesis based on correlated activity and connectivity, no logic to be seen.

This paper did blow my mind though, I hope to see more creative stuff like it:

https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00806-6?_...

pdf here:

https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0896-6273%2822%2900...

3 comments

> It's like looking at the copper wiring on the motherboard, or the pins of the CPU, when what you really want is the logic from the networked gates (transistors).

and what you kind of really want is a debugging guide to an OS.

hah hah it is to laugh.

I'd settle for a repair or upgrade manual tbh
have you tried exercising it and resting it again
You should read about the immense criticism this paper attracted after its publication. It was published on the same journal since publishers like a bit of controversy ;) [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08966...
There's a pdf here if anyone else is interested:

https://www.yorku.ca/science/research/schalljd/wp-content/up...

Yeah all that criticism doesn't go into any detail about actual methodological flaws or issues with the results... It just complains about language and is pretty sanctimonious for such weak and generic citations. Like, those are the sort of citations I'd give as an undergrad and trying to pad a paper to make it seem more authoritative and well established than it is lol.

Were any of the criticisms NOT centered around their irresponsible use of language and about the actual methodology and results? How they cultured different neurons to play pong is pretty amazing by itself to me.

Idk, I think it's like looking at a winning lottery ticket[1] to a game you haven't played yet.

1. https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03635