Mind's Eye Brain Transfers

The world around us is now full of knowledge (at least if we can
operate disinformation filters). Potentially, we could see in 16
colours with some gene-splicing from a prawn and even 'see' dark
matter with something similar with an alien life-form evolved to
detect thermodynamic radiation rather than light. There are sharks
off Greenland that live blind (due to an infection) that have
developed other perception.

Scientists are working on transferring brains to non-brain
substrates. human brains and the minds that emerge from them have
allowed us to create culture and civilisation. We humans have always
augmented ourselves in the face of challenges, creating artefacts from
clothing to cellphones to cochlear implants. As ever, human survival
will depend on us being ever more adaptable.

Fortunately, we may be on the brink of fundamentally surpassing our
limits: there is no reason why the complex information processing at
the core of human experience should continue to be unique to one
biological implementation. Moving the functions of minds from brains
to other types of materials, other substrates, to become substrate-
independent minds (SIMs), would be an extraordinary adaptation.

At a survival level, a SIM could be embodied in a variety of ways, and
so would perhaps be better able to survive potential societal
collapse. At a human level, the goal would be continued existence of
personality, individual characteristics, a manner of experiencing and
a personal way of processing experiences. Continuity of self could be
assured, despite minds having novel embodiments. This could even be
'life after death'.

Most SIM work is based on "whole brain emulation". Researchers are
trying to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the
mammalian brain down to the molecular level, drawing on statistical
data from many animals. Such a vast undertaking has to be broken down
into much smaller pieces: there are many things we need to know. For
example, can we get good enough resolution of neurons - individual
electrically spiking neurons, morphologically detailed neurons, or the
molecular processes going on in synapses - to make emulation truly
feasible. We aretrying to build artificial neural cells, initially to
act as an implanted prosthesis for people who have lost brain cells to
diseases such as Alzheimer's.

If we tried to fine-tune and correct the parameters of the billions of
neurons in the human brain without a high-resolution map of the
"shape" of how they fire, we would probably be computing until the end
of time. Instead, we must break the problem down, which is why our map
combines both brain structure and function measurements at large scale
and high resolution. In this field, millimetres of tissue or anything
beyond a few hundred neurons is considered large. Quite amazingly, a
programme to achieve whole brain emulation is emerging.

I doubt I can interest the group with the science - most is being done
on nematode worms - but what would a brain made by humans be? After
all, we usually lay claim that what makes us 'human' comes from the
brain.

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