Sebastian and the lab will host a Google+ Hangout this Saturday night (read more here http://blog.eyewire.org/lets-cellebrate/) add your questions for us to answer.
RSVP to the hangout here: https://plus.google.com/events/clvolf430ic3ps10ae87iahrv5k
Hey Sebastian,
Ray Kurzweil just came out with his latest book - "How To Create A Mind" . What do you think of his conception of the brain? Is he crazy?
Sebastian,
What do think of David Chalmers’ characterization of the uniqueness of consciousness (self-awareness, introspection, ‘self-ness’ etc.) as the “Hard Problem” that is fundamentally different than the multitude of unconscious tasks that the brain (and its connectome) perform? Will the problem of consciousness be solved by the connectome? Or will consciousness remain elusive despite our best efforts? I am an orthodox Reductionist, but I must admit that consciousness or the infinitely regressive nature of self-awareness seems to be a thing that defies reductionism. I don’t see how science gets closure on it. It defies capture. I dunno.
Hey Sebastian,
Kurzweil, and others, think that the connectome
You champion the Connectome as the source of who we are. The connectome is a structural characterization of the brain. But there is also a ‘dynamical’ brain, characterized by the complex interactive dynamics of neuron firing, neurotransmitters, transmission speeds, the whole dance. Is it not important to understand the dynamics of the brain as much as the connectivity? Thanks, Greg Slater
How do you foresee advances in connectomics affecting the development of neural prosthetics and/or neural augmentation? Do you think that we may one day be able to identify malfunctioning or dysfunctional neural circuits in the brains of patients and alter their connectivity or firing patters to treat things like depression, ADHD, OCD, anxiety disorders, etc in a more targeted fashion than drugs, in order to improve their quality of life?
I’m so sorry that I may not be able to join the Hangout today (I’m not very well today) 
I can’t wait to watch it later on and I’ll be thinking of you all having a great time. Here’s the question I’ve been thinking about:
(My apologies as I (ashamedly) have not yet read Connectome 
This may have already been covered in there.)
This may have already been covered in there.)
In imagining a possible future where we can 'upload' our minds and live indefinitely, I wonder what kind of person we would be in that state. From what I understand, the 'me' I am now is an ever-changing, occasionally conscious, occasionally rational being emerging from a cocktail of electrical and chemical signals, memories, environmental/external stimuli and gut bacteria! A digital version would need all these variabilities as well in order to really be 'me', no? Creating that sounds like the ultimate Sim game - fascinating! :)
yo, guys, wots up. Congrats and have fun on the tonight’s hangyparty. I will be missing it, and this time.
I have two questions for Sebastian and friends 
1 - What the heck is happening between you guys and the Eagleman’s lab? (come ooooooon) I can smell there is something epic goin’ on.
2 - So, we have soo many synapses, but as I know, each synaps fires with particular individual frequency, ye? And on top of it, for in respons to different experiences, same synapses could fire with different frequency. Isn’t that a problem for you guys? How the hell are you going to manage that? :D. Markram has also no idea…(lol)
Bay Kirro
1. How much time was spent making eyewire (the game)
2. Why only like 7 cells total? How does the AI know where to start??
3.What is the application of this game to real science and what are the future steps? What are connectomes?
4. If I want to go into Neuroscience what should I do? [i'm a 10th grader]
5. Did you get new servers? :P
I’m sure this is explained somewhere, but when I run the eyewire interface on firefox, I don’t see the command list or the opacity control. Suggestions? (again, sorry if I didn’t missed obvious instructions. Thanks.
Sebastian,
Kurzweil and others think the brain is organized into enormous numbers ‘pattern recognition’ modules of about 100 neurons each, connected both hierarchically and in parallel. I think he believes these fundamental units work in the same basic way, but can be ‘trained’ to perform different tasks based upon the input stream (say, visual, audio, etc.) and their position within a larger hierarchy. Do you agree? And if this is the case, then could these basic units be recognized from their similar topological properties (connections), right? So, as the connectome is filled out, even a small section should should enormous numbers of these units. Is that to be expected? Thanks.
It seems that various researchers are identifying or hypothesizing the basic low level processing units in the brain, made up of some number of neurons together with their connection maps and the larger hierarchies within which they are embedded. Various people have proposed various theoretical algorithms as models for how these units function. Jeff Hawkins, at Numenta, likes sparse distributed representations. Others have proposed ‘liquid state machines’, etc, etc. Do you think it will be possible, as sufficient areas of the connectome are mapped, to recognize the type of algorithm that is being represented in the small units and thus distinguish between different proposed mechanism? I would think that the first actual identification of a neural/connectome correlate of a theoretical processing algorithm would be an incredible milestone for the field. Or, do you think that ‘algorithms’ used by the brain in its processing units are nothing like any of the proposed mathematical algorithms?
Does your system decide the level of difficulty of work to allocate to a given player based on their past performance? So, the system continually moves players to higher or lower levels of difficulty based on demonstrated competence?