Now published - the #BANC! A full central nervous system (CNS) connectome of a limbed animal at single-synapse resolution, enabling us to follow sensory-motor arcs and understand how the CNS controls the body. rdcu.be/fncjS. #neuroscience. Video by @quorumetrix.bsky.social 1/18
Our thread on the newly published brain and nerve cord #BANC #connectome, and what #neuroscience stories we can tell with it.
🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social
We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked
What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective
We call it the digital sphinx
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A small and interesting neural controller for object pursuit on the fly:
I was delighted to contribute to this amazing work lead by @asbates.bsky.social, Lee and Wilson labs, and a village of contributors. This is a monument complete with connections to muscles and proprioceptors which will enable us to simulate of the sensorimotor loops of a brain for the first time!!
We are excited to have been part of the community effort that led to the Brain-and-Nerve-Cord (BANC) connectome.
Video
Some of you saw a preview of this result at my Cosyne talk last week. We may have had too much fun working on this worm-fly model 🤣🤓🤣
(The digital sphinx may be imagery, but the lessons are real.)
Serious question… is this is a real fly?
A startup thinks it's a "real uploaded animal". What do you think?
for @theverge.com with @shahabbakht.bsky.social @asbates.bsky.social @anayebi.bsky.social @birchlse.bsky.social @tom-mcclelland.bsky.social www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Please check out @darbly.bsky.social & @asbates.bsky.social 's thread at bsky.app/profile/darb..., or HMS News at hms.harvard.edu/news/researc... for a quick overview, or read the full paper at doi.org/10.1038/s415... for details.
In 1986, John White published "The Mind of a Worm," the first complete wiring diagram of any animal's brain. 7,000+ synapses in C. elegans, mapped by hand.
This year he won the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences. And he's donating his share to OpenWorm.
