Ted for Two

Sebastian Seung:I am my connectome

Mr. Seung hypothesizes that human memory and thought takes place inside the connections between the brain cells, not in the genome, and not in brain cells. He debates the wisdom of cryonics, given the fact that brain damage occurs at death. Scientists, he says, may be able to resurrect the body, but the connectomes (memory, experience, self, may be long destroyed.

I find his theory plausible and even highly likely. Holy writ does not teach the immortality of the soul, but rather that “all thoughts do perish” at death. I hope that mr Seung can accelerate his mapping techniques so we can see more evidence in our lifetime.

Three links associated with the individual or talk

Full bio and more links
Brief synopsis of the theory of connectomes and the work it was based upon.

Sebastian Seung's Home Page
Basically a bio of mr. seung that details his accomplishments, publications and theories.

NEURAL CIRCUITS, BRAIN MAPPING, BRAIN ATLAS ...
The full meal deal including the connectome,Neural segmentation challenge,Fibre pathways,Connectomics software.

Henry Markram
Supercomputing the brain’s secrets

Mr Markram began by trying to describe how a brain creates reality. He goes on to discuss the logistics of simulating just one dendrite. “You need an entire laptop to recreate one dendrite, and there are 10,000 of them, so you need 10,000 laptops, or you go to IBM. He forsees a time in the furure when he will dispatch a fully sentient hologram to TED to deliver his recitation.

I appreciated the parts of his talk that actually dovetails with mr. Seung’s theories of connectomes. He has actually measured spikes in brain function BETWEEN the cells. Very interesting stuff!

Three links associated with the individual or talk

Full bio and more links
Describes Ted’s work and ambitions including the 3d modeling of human brain function and goals of contributing towards more humanesque robotics.

Henry Markram's page at EPFL
Basically a bio of mr. Markram that details his accomplishments, inventions and theories.

The Blue Brain Project homepage
Detailing the project from modeling rat brains to it’s lofty ideals of recreating a human brain independent of human life.