Connectomics
| David Dalrymple's work on Project NEMALOAD, that intends to create a fully realized uploaded version of a nematode worm based on its connectome has yielded a new an app that displays video renderings of the worms' neural activity, where each frame can be rotated and manipulated in 3D. |
David Dalrymple is an independent scientist, funded by the Thiel Foundation studying the neurology of the nematode worm C. Elegans, an important model organism in genetics and neuroscience.
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According to the project's website:
C. elegans is a simple-minded animal: it has exactly 302 neurons (compare that to a human's roughly 100 billion). The pattern of connections between these neurons was painstakingly mapped out decades ago using electron microscopy, but it turns out that knowledge of the connections is not sufficient to understand (or even replicate) the information processor they represent. For example, some connections are inhibitory while others are excitatory, but this map doesn't say which is which.
In order to learn how one neuron affects another, we need to see what happens when the first neuron is activated. NEMALOAD (“nematode upload”) is a project to integrate a number of recent technologies that should make this feasible, at least in C. elegans, and using this capability to replicate the information processing structure that governs the worm's behavior in a digital model.
In the video above, he demos Nemashow, an app built with Meteor and WebGL.
The app displays video renderings of the worms' neural activity, where each frame can be rotated and manipulated in 3D.
SOURCE MeteorVideos, Image Project OpenWorm
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