this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
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Google scientists have modelled a fragment of the human brain at nanoscale resolution, revealing cells with previously undiscovered features.

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[–] realitista@lemm.ee 35 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Brain cable management be like

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It's all just cables now. Someone took the server out years ago and it just kept working out of habit.

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 6 months ago

Electricians will deny this is true but then just make up a new word for it (inductance)

[–] metaStatic@kbin.social 13 points 6 months ago

if I cleaned it up I wouldn't know where anything is

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Upon seeing this model Johan Medici, who had spent the past decade attempting to develop computer simulations that replicate the way a human mind works, yelled,"FUUUUUUUCK!" before throwing himself out a window.

[–] skeptomatic@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 months ago

..classic Johan.

[–] Onii-Chan@kbin.social 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. The complexity of life just continues to astound me.

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago

Yes! That this thing could evolve into existence is practically a miracle

[–] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

then built artificial-intelligence models that were able to stitch the microscope images together to reconstruct the whole sample in 3D.

Why AI for that?

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 19 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

ML is pretty common when working with a ton of data, from another article:

To make a map this finely detailed, the team had to cut the tissue sample into 5,000 slices and scan them with a high-speed electron microscope. Then they used a machine-learning model to help electronically stitch the slices back together and label the features. The raw data set alone took up 1.4 petabytes. “It’s probably the most computer-intensive work in all of neuroscience,” says Michael Hawrylycz, a computational neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, who was not involved in the research. “There is a Herculean amount of work involved.”

Unfortunately techbros have poisoned the term AI 🥲

Source: Google helped make an exquisitely detailed map of a tiny piece of the human brain

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Where can I go download this cubic mm?

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 23 points 6 months ago (3 children)
[–] metaStatic@kbin.social 21 points 6 months ago (2 children)

you wouldn't download a brain

[–] Kissaki@beehaw.org 11 points 6 months ago

Only a cubic millimetre of it

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago

Sadly, you can't download the hardware to run models that size.

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

I imagined it would be big but that's mad. Is that full 3d model or just connection cos of its just connections it really shows how far our ai is from replacing us.

[–] hazelnoot@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Jain’s team then built artificial-intelligence models that were able to stitch the microscope images together to reconstruct the whole sample in 3D.

The map is so large that most of it has yet to be manually checked, and it could still contain errors created by the process of stitching so many images together. “Hundreds of cells have been ‘proofread’, but that’s obviously a few per cent of the 50,000 cells in there,” says Jain.

Ah so it's not a real model, just an AI approximation.

[–] I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago

It still seems like a real model to me. Just because they used a fancy computer to turn a sequence of 2d slices into a 3d representation doesn't mean it's not real.

[–] kerr@aussie.zone 4 points 6 months ago

That is amazing.

[–] blarth@thelemmy.club 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Google can do this, but can’t maintain Google assistant features we’ve had for years?

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 7 points 6 months ago

Fortunately the people working on brain research aren’t the same people programming assistant

[–] whoreticulture@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Why is Google doing this research?!?

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 2 points 6 months ago

Harvard has been partnering with their research labs for the last decade to gain access to hardware and algos they wouldn’t have themselves