Biology:MICrONS
| MICrONS | |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of project | Academic; Scientific (neuroscience) |
| Location | United States |
| Owner | IARPA |
| Established | 2016 |
| Funding | United States government, US$100 million |
| Website | www |
The MICrONS program (Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks) is a five-year project run by the United States government through the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) with the goal of reverse engineering one cubic millimeter—spanning many petabytes of volumetric data—of a rodent's brain tissue and use insights from its study to improve machine learning and artificial intelligence by constructing a connectome.[1][2] The program is part of the White House BRAIN Initiative.[1][2]
Teams
The program has set up three independent teams, each of which will take a different approach towards the goal. The teams are led by David Cox of Harvard University, Tai Sing Lee of Carnegie Mellon University;[1][2] and jointly by Andreas Tolias and Xaq Pitkow of the Baylor College of Medicine, Clay Reid of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Sebastian Seung of Princeton University.[3]
The Cox team has aimed to build a three-dimensional map of the neural connections within the source tissue block using reconstructions from electron micrographs.[3]
Technology and infrastructure for storing petabyte-scale volumetric data, including a cloud-based database, bossDB,[4] were developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.[5]
Approach
The part of the brain chosen for the project is part of the visual cortex, chosen as a representative of a task – visual perception – that is easy for animals and human beings to perform, but has turned out to be extremely difficult to emulate with computers.[1][2]
Cox's team is attempting to build a three dimensional mapping of the actual neural connections, based on fine electron micrographs.[2] Lee's team is taking a DNA barcoding approach, in attempt to map the brain circuits by barcode-labelling of each neuron, and cross-synapse barcode connections.[1] Tolias's team is taking a data-driven approach, assuming the brain creates statistical expectations about the world it sees.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Cepelewicz, Jordana (March 8, 2016). "The U.S. Government Launches a $100-Million "Apollo Project of the Brain"". Scientific American. Springer Nature America. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-s-government-launches-a-100-million-apollo-project-of-the-brain/.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Emily, Singer (April 6, 2016). "Mapping the Brain to Build Better Machines". Simons Foundation. https://www.quantamagazine.org/mapping-the-brain-to-build-better-machines-20160406/.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Gleeson, Alfie; Sawyer, Abigail (October 2018). "Mapping a Brain". BioTechniques 65 (4): 181–5. doi:10.2144/btn-2018-0142. PMID 30284931.
- ↑ "BossDB". https://bossdb.org/.
- ↑ "boss". https://docs.theboss.io/. "The Boss is a cloud based storage service developed for the IARPA MICrONS program."
External links
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