> In any case, it seems likely that we're on track to have both the computational ability and the actual neurological data needed to create an "uploaded intelligences" sometime over the next decade.
They don't even know how a single neuron works yet. There is complexity and computation at many scales and distributed throughout the neuron and other types of cells (e.g. astrocytes) and they are discovering more relentlessly.
They just recently (last few years) found that dendrites have local spiking and non-linear computation prior to forwarding the signal to the soma. They couldn't tell that was happening previously because the equipment couldn't detected the activity.
They discovered that astrocytes don't just have local calcium wave signaling (local=within the extensions of the cell), they also forward calcium waves to the soma which integrates that information just like a neuron soma does with electricity.
Single dendrites can detect patterns of synaptic activity and respond with calcium and electrical signaling (i.e. when synapse fires in a particular timing sequence, the a signal is forwarded to the soma).
It's really amazing how much computationally relevant complexity there is, and how much they keep adding to their knowledge each year. (I have a file of notes with about 2,000 lines of these types of interesting factoids I've been accumulating as I read).
They don't even know how a single neuron works yet. There is complexity and computation at many scales and distributed throughout the neuron and other types of cells (e.g. astrocytes) and they are discovering more relentlessly.
They just recently (last few years) found that dendrites have local spiking and non-linear computation prior to forwarding the signal to the soma. They couldn't tell that was happening previously because the equipment couldn't detected the activity.
They discovered that astrocytes don't just have local calcium wave signaling (local=within the extensions of the cell), they also forward calcium waves to the soma which integrates that information just like a neuron soma does with electricity.
Single dendrites can detect patterns of synaptic activity and respond with calcium and electrical signaling (i.e. when synapse fires in a particular timing sequence, the a signal is forwarded to the soma).
It's really amazing how much computationally relevant complexity there is, and how much they keep adding to their knowledge each year. (I have a file of notes with about 2,000 lines of these types of interesting factoids I've been accumulating as I read).