The brain is not just electrical signals. Scientists believe that if we can find out absolutely everything about how it works, at least in theory, will be able to digitize someone’s mind, and then load it into the computer, thereby creating a virtually immortal digital identity, as it were, for example, shown in the film “Superiority” with johnny Depp. Sounds fantastic, of course, but scientists are moving in this direction. If we talk about the human brain, then we are not even close to this level was not chosen, however, some success was demonstrated through the team of international scientists, which has digitized the brain of a round worm Caenorhabditis elegans.
Scientists learned very well the tiny nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. We know all the genes and the peculiarity of her nervous system. Therefore, in 2014 the researchers in the project OpenWorm managed to map the connections among all 302 neurons of the worm and on the basis of the obtained data to create a digital version of its neurons. The main objective of the project was to complete replication Caenorhabditis elegans as a digital body, but the researchers decided to go ahead and not only created a digital version of the brain of nematodes, but also uploaded it in a simple robot created from Lego.
This robot is actually the physical embodiment of a worm and has all the essential equivalent of the nematode body: the sonar sensor that acts as the olfactory system, and a set of motors, which perform the function of motor neurons of the worm, each side of his body. Surprisingly, without any pre-made pre-programmed instructions of the digitized version of the neural system of Caenorhabditis elegans really able to control the robot.
“It is claimed that the robot is able to behave similar to the behavior exhibited by a living worm Caenorhabditis elegans. External stimulation of the sensor, simulating his olfactory organ, causes the robot to stop. Touching the front and rear touch sensors, and the stimulation of the sensor that is responsible for a food system that causes it to move forward or back,” writes the website I-Programmer.info.
Timothy Bousbia, the founder of the OpenWorm project, in turn, posted a video on YouTube that shows “activity” of the Lego-worm. He moves forward, backward, stops and moves again.
The researchers note that the digital simulation of the brain worm are imperfect and in some aspects simplified. For example, scientists had to simplify the process, acting as a trigger for the activation of artificial neurons. But the fact that the robot actually moves by itself, can stop before the obstacle, and then back away, using nothing more than just a digitized code that simulates the activity of neurons in the brain of a worm looks pretty impressive.
OpenWorm project continues its work and is fully open. On his official website, there are simulation models and visualization of digital nematodes. Now the researchers want to restore the work once they have created an iOS app that allows you to monitor the operation of the digital worm (a sort of analogue of the “Tamagotchi”, but without direct control), so looking for people willing to help them in this matter.
And yet digital worms is so fun. A key aim of the project is to create a connectome is a description of all the neural connections of the human brain. In the end, even if we are not able to download our brains into computers and just learn how to create their simulation model, even this will make a significant contribution to the development of artificial intelligence and in General computer systems.
Scientists digitized the brain of a worm and downloaded it into the robot
Nikolai Khizhnyak