OpenWorm Researchers Upload Animal's Brain Into A Robot

 Mind Uploading  

Researchers from the OpenWorm project have successfully mapped all the connections between the a roundworm's 302 neurons simulated them in software that controls a small robot.

For those interested in the Singularity, it has long been understood that there are no physical laws limiting us from taking our connectome, or mind file and duplicating it in another substrate, such as a robot. This technical challenge has just had a proof of concept made by uploading the brain of a roundworm into a robot.

Researchers from the OpenWorm project have successfully mapped all the connections between Caenorhabditis elegans’ 302 neurons and managed to simulate them in software.

Scientists published the first map of the worm's synaptic connections, or connectome, in 1986 and a refined draft in 2006.

The brain of the roundworm has just 1000 cells, of which only 302 are neurons with 7,000 connections or synapses.

In comparison, the human brain has an estimated 86 billion neurons, and over 10¹⁴ synapses.

"We believe brain research must accelerate, we are taking matters into our own hands. If we cannot build a computer model of a worm, the most studied organism in all of biology, we don’t stand a chance to understand something as complex as the human brain."

Experiments like this help accomplish the eventual uploading of more complex organisms, leading towards the post-human goal of uploading a human consciousness. More importantly, this research is helping us better understand how brains work as a system and could lead to more effective treatment, or maybe even a cure, for diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

The researchers do note that this is just a first step. The brain simulation still isn’t 100% exact, as the researchers had to simplify the process that triggers an artificial neuron to fire.

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“Because we believe brain research must accelerate, we are taking matters into our own hands. If we cannot build a computer model of a worm, the most studied organism in all of biology, we don’t stand a chance to understand something as complex as the human brain. We must crawl before we can walk!” OpenWorm explains on their website.

On the robot, sensors replace the biological inputs that the animal's brain would receive. Motor neuron simulators in the software, running on an on-board Raspberry Pi computer, then drive the robot’s motors as if they were right and left groups of muscles.

So, without being explicitly programmed to do so, the robot moved back and forth and avoided objects using only a simulated brain. The robot behaves much like a real worm would, given similar sensory inputs. Activating the front sensor stops forward movement and, touching the front and rear sensors makes the robot move forward and back.

You might even say, the robot 'thinks' it is a worm.

The OpenWorm robot seems to show that a stimulated digital brain might behave like a biological brain does.  Conceivably, if we eventually map a human brain with similar resolution and supply it with stimulation in a virtual or physical environment, we would produce a human copy in robotic substrate.




SOURCE  iProgrammer

By 33rd Square

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