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'

Tipping Point in the Brain

First of all, the title has been stolen. Some days ago, I read an article in Scientific American about the 'Tipping point' in brain. The article was very enlightening and quite interesting. In a nutshell, it stated that there are instances when the regular communication between neurons [which is like every two people talking different things with each other in a crowd of many-many (really very large) people] is 'paused' and all the neurons synchronize (cohere) and are concerned with only one message. The voltage measured using electrode array increases. Also, the voltage at different parts of the brain increase and look similar - depicting that these regions are synchronized at that instant of time. This was compared to the idea of 'tipping point' wherein an idea requires an enough(critical) number of people to be spread to after which the idea just spreads like a BOOM. So, the author points out how society is also a pseudo-neuronal network.

Well, I felt this conclusion to be very cool. But is this speciality of similarity only between brain and society, or can it be between other groups of many objects that interact with their small subgroup of neighbours but also show peculiar wholesome characterstics. One example that I can think of is - lets take many atoms in a tube. So, the atoms interact with each other within a small region of influence. Now, if we have small pulses of synchronized motion, then if the motion is hard enough (enough speed and number of atoms) , then the pulses may become a trend - a tipping point effect, I guess.
Who knows such tipping effects might be taking place at all levels and this is the ultimate scalability and self similarity of nature?

Also, as tipping effect, can we attach other characterisitcs that are similar to brain and society? One of the major puzzules is consiousness. People have always talked about the consciousness of a society - But it was always discussed in philosophical or economic way. We can now talk about consioussness in more scientific way after this 'Coherence' effect in brain.

Another nice but wierd analogy which could be found is the 6 degrees of freedom in the society. According to it, we know every other person on earth via 6 people in between on average. (Like A knows B, B knows C has 1 degree of freedom between A and C). So, is this true for brain? This could also explain why there was almost instant synchonisation between geographically distant parts of brain. This explanation could save the terms used by the author the article like 'long neurons'.



Another important doubt that arises in my mind is about the use of word 'pause' used in the article. What does it
really mean? Does this mean that they revive their activities once the message has been processed? If the revival is not exact, does it mean that the message affected the talking between individual cells that was going on? So, if the talking between the cells was taken to be independent of message before it came, then where is that talking place now? If nowhere, then it means that independent talking only gave rise to the message. Dude, what the hell is happening up there?