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http://hplusclub.com/tucson/presentation20071116

Todd Huffman - "Designing a path to organism emulation"

Date and Time: Friday, November 16, 2007 from 4:00pm until 6:00pm MST

Location: Santa Cruz Room, 3rd Floor, Student Union Memorial Center, 1303 E. University Blvd., Tucson, AZ, USA 85721-0017 | Google Maps

Description: "Designing a path to organism emulation: a discussion of technology today and tomorrow" - Todd Huffman is a transhumanist, brain imaging and neuroscience researcher, and cryonics expert, among other talents. He has been featured in [WARNING: blood] Body Modification Magazine. He will discuss possible technical paths to organism emulation and mind uploading.

Event Listings

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• UA News Calendar listing

Presentations

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Meeting Notes

Uploading
- What is the nature of neural encoding and computation?
- Can we access the information to replicate?
- Is the emulation computationally tractable?

Necessary
- connectivity, connection type, connection strength

Connectivity
- defines what computations a network can do

Neurology - decoding the brain
- sense neurons being stimulated, tests strength
- connectivity patterns expected are not what's seen
- examine how generic neurons connect
- knowing connectivity can tell us a lot about computation

Neural encoding
- patterns do specific computations for an animal

Optimization
- minimizing curving lengths
- genetic and developmental constraints
- computational functional requirements
- dynamics such as synchronization
- really complicated network pattern

Groups, we'll be able to extract large-scale connectivity
- KESM doesn't show enough
- SBF-SEM too expensive, too slow
- ATLUM

Morphology
- connection/synapse types from morphology
- array tomography - Stanford Smith Lab

Connection strength
- choices based on connection strengths

Neurons are multi-scale thingies
- 100 trillion connections
- connectivity depends part on entire size
- much energy used to separate ions

Will identity persist through freezing?

Methods
- dyes are toxic
- firing can be done with photons rather than glass electrodes

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