Your connectome, the map of all 86 billion connected neurons in your brain, is hopelessly complex. In fact, one human connectome has a staggering 10,000 times that number of neural pathways. Every thought you have and every memory you hold exists in your connectome, and major efforts are under way to map it. (emphasis added)
Created by scientists at MIT, Eyewire is a browser game that lets players take on the challenge of mapping neural pathways in brains — no scientific background required. By playing, gamers are not only mapping neurons, but also training artificial intelligence algorithms to better understand how to map neurons themselves, what Amy Robinson, Creative Director at Eyewire, calls “augmented intelligence”. The more that gamers play, the better the computers get.
Using today’s state of the art technology, it takes an AI-assisted researcher almost 50 hours to reconstruct a SINGLE neuron! At that pace, one researcher would need to devote the next 500 million years to neural mapping; no bathroom breaks allowed. (emphasis added)
...they are leveraging the innate human desire to compete and play games. Considering that as a planet, we spend 3 billion hours playing videogames every week, imagine what can be accomplished when even a portion of that time is allocated to things like neural discovery?
The post brain mapped world will look nothing like the world of today. A functionally accurate brain map forever changes the equation for everything from medicine to human performance. Cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s and depression might one day be curable, while brain augmentation through cognitive implants could become commonplace. (emphasis added)
