Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Bon Nuit!!!

Hi,
This is the first time I am writing directly on the blog and not pasting it from a notepad draft. [perhaps because its 3 in morning here in Nancy and I might be a bit tired].

So, today was a strange day for me. I had realisations for my actions of last week, I had realisations about myselves and the best part of the day [ Actually early morning of the next day] was my refreshing talk with Alexandre at 2 in morning on the road.

So, it all started with the irritating friends doing planning for the holidays of Toussants and the more irritating Skype. By the way, I noticed that the first person on your list is always highlighted in a group call. So, Skype makes him responsible for the White Noise. How Clever!! So, 8 hours of course in day and rain and chilling cold and the great above mentioned Amis.. And triggered by my actions of last week and the 'one thing' that had been on the back of my mind the whole week..

And the never shutting brain of mine.. Just yesterday I realised that my brain can shut also as I dint know when I slept and had a 'pure' dreamless night afterall . But the next day, Prof. Patney and Prof. SD Joshi came into my afternoon nap to remind me of the crimes I had participated in 2nd year..

And so, as the darkness of the night approached, I thought more and more and didn't know of what!!

So, here I go on the road at 1 in night to think of the things I was thinking.. So, I do the thinking walk which I had lost in college but well known at my home.. And I found many solutions [not exactly, but atleast categerosied the problems ] as the excuse I should give my professor why I didn't do the required thing in my project [that I dont agree with your Idea and I dont do things which I dint agree - lets hope I dare to say that!!] .. And how I tend to generalise things from single events and how this reflects well in forming my habits [because I dont try much] and also my project at LORIA .. But the thing at the back of the mind was still not satisfied..

And so, when I was trying to feel my fingers of legs to see if they are still hanging out there, I found this amazing stranger on the road 'which called himselves' (the direct translation of 'qui s'apple' ) Alexandre. He also was a distressed soul like me wandering on the lonely streets of Nancy. He was doing his PhD in BioChem (Why do I always find maggu people ??) from Strasbourg and he was here for his holidays at his parents. And the pradox - the guy wanted fresh air in 2 in morning in holidays - imagine his 'parents' !!.. Anyways, so we talked about many things .. from which french poodle he had .. to Why he should Visit India.

But the best thing happened when he asked, "Why are you here??" .. I said to 'Think' .. "And You?" .. He said, "Everything except thinking.." .. That's when I had this great realisation that I am not the only one in this crap-bag, but I am the only one who is not getting used to it.

And trust and hope that the best answer to the 'thing' at the back of mind would come only if I let time to give me the answer. Sometimes, you can't do anything about something but just leave it to take it's natural course.

So, with deep fresh air in my lungs and calmness of mind [And exitement to write this blog..] .. I left Alexandre without any contact whatsoever for future. Perhaps it was like the stories of Leo Tolstoy when god himself comes when you are lonely and deserted , or not.. But that guy was the same [functionally - [damn, ma tete]] , for me... I might not meet the guy again as it will soon be snow here and streets more lonely..

And so, with this, for my friends in IIT - "Enjoy the Rendezvous", for my friends in India, "Good Morning" , for the 'thing' at the back of my mind, "Hope you are sleeping well" ..and for me, "Bon Nuit!!"

PS: I hope this blog written live over the night is as revolutionary for me as was such a blog for Mark Zukerberg [the founder of Facebook, when he created an illegal site FaceMash] ..

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Simulating the Brain

Brain has always been a very interesting in difficult domain of Neurosciences and Biology. I currently chose a project course work on modelling the structure of Brain using the the currently proposed Re-inforced Driven Dimensionality Reduction (RDDR) model at LORIA-INRIA a computer science Research lab at Nancy, France.

So, while studying for the project, I realised one thing which the engineers are often not advised (i think) to do - reverse engineering. And this was exactly what I was doing. The brain given to me, a final functioning object (philosophically, created by Lord) was studied from different perspective to create a model of the thing and with the ultimate aim, of course, to replicate and improve it.

So, why this method?

We could have a more constructive approach. I mean, can we recreate the whole evolutionay history or simulate evolution? This way, starting from the different theories of origin of life, to the different theories of evolution and the development of brain, I can attack all the areas.

The main question is, but how do I model all this things?

So, there are three parties- the organism(s), the resources and the nature. And each have the Darwin's law which helps it function. The characterisitc of organisms is to have Variation and the motivation to produce 'plusiers' offsprings. The natural resources need to be limited and the nature has the respnsibility to do Natural selection by the survival of the fittest. But the characterisitcs which are transmitted to the next generation must be seen carefully so that it is not lamarkism (or even test lamarkism).

The main challenge is to define the above actors mathematically.
A world is defined with the initial natural resources.
An organism is a function that can sense, utilise, modify and produce natual resources (even fight wars!!) .
An organism (function) can reproduce other many (tendency to reproduce more) organisms (functions) with minor change in parameters (Variation) from which many functions will die young.
The growth function of organisms can also result in Variations.
The death function is executed by the nature (using Survival of the fittest).
The 'Competition' is realised by the nature by managing the resources which indirectly affect the organisms [Thats why people in developing world are 'better' than developed world].

This, I guess seems very similar to the Cellular Automata thing. So, can we make the cellular automata approach real world using parameters? And in this path, if we discover 'chaos' [by feeding in the numbers back like the MIT scientist in 1962], we need to change completely the nature we look at many parts of the world.

This is well, but what about the brain?

Well, one approach I think can be used is to reflect all the things at the level of brain and using the same 5 rules of evolution at different levels of brain (for example, between neurons to between brains) can we evolute brain?

We can have the resources for brain and the motivation is to aquire resources and expand itself and increase its population. The same for a neuron also. So, this is a two step thing - first decide the world for every level (world is the natural resouces and the acting nature at that level) and then give the laws of evolution to each of the actors of that level. And reflect this at all levels. This can be done for all the different systems, I guess.

Also, as there are cooperative and mutually benficiary groups forming in the nature, this thing can also be found at other levels , for example neurons where a group of neurons can combine to perform a particular function.

One assumption if of infinite computing power which I guess our computer scientists will be glad to give.

I hope we can solve many questions with this method of constructive analysis carrying onwards from the already done reverse engineering analysis (Darwin's laws and many other things). This is the way designers solve problem. Let's see if we have two world wars in this simulation also.


I found this video, I think it might be interesting to watch:



Here's another interesting link. The video is a bit long but after 17mins, the only thing you can say is: 'WOW'