Ick. Triple negative (deny, not, different). It makes that sentence very hard to read.
I’m not an expert, but there must be a fundamental difference, or we’d have emulated a brain by now. A brain isn’t just neurons, it’s also chemicals. Our brains work differently depending on which chemicals are flowing through them. In addition, our brain is integrated with our body to the point where if we lose a limb, we still think it’s there. We can be convinced that a rubber hand is our own.
As I said previously, I don’t think it’s sufficiently different that parts of it can’t be emulated, augmented (as the technology in question purports to do), or even replaced entirely with electronic circuitry. I do think that it’s a profound oversimplification to say that there’s no fundamental difference between the two, because we’re approaching the nano-scale physical limits of how small we can make silicon-metal computer chips, and we still can’t fit anything resembling a human brain simulation into something the size of a human head, or something a thousand times that size even.
On academic subjects I tend to favor accuracy over readability, sorry. Professional habit.
That’s a bad argument. We’re discovering new things at a remarkable pace, including both information about how the brain works and new ways to do even basic computations.
There’s also the fact that “emulate a human brain using silicon wafers” is not an especially high research priority outside of science fiction, nor is that how this kind of bioengineering problem works. You start by emulating parts of the brain, such as with this project, and gradually the knowledge you accrete and technology you perfect make the bigger project possible.
I’m more of an expert in science fiction than actual science, and you’ve probably absorbed more accurate information through sheer osmosis than I have through study, so I see no reason to argue with you.
To be serious for a moment: memory enhancement is actually a huge untapped market.
There are a helluva lot of Baby Boomers getting to dementia age right now. The pharma companies have been frantically working on (mostly ineffective) Alzheimer’s drugs over the last decade, and they ain’t doing it out of altruism.
Unfortunately, a working version of this sort of neuroprosthesis is probably still a few decades away, and the version without horrendous side effects is probably a few decades behind that. Brains are complicated, and easy to fuck up.
Neurons are not simple binary switches. Action potentials aren’t just yes/no things; they vary by rate. Slow, fast, very fast, slow then fast, etc,
But that’s just the electrical signal within the neuron; once you get to the synapse, it gets a lot more complicated. Releasing a wide variety of neurotransmitters (which in turn have a wide range of effects, mediated by NT type, location, timing, persistence, interaction with other NTs, etc), creating and removing various receptor sites, growing or pruning further synaptic connections, and so on.
Then there’s the NT complexity of agonists vs antagonists, partial agonists, reverse agonists, NTs that act as agonists at low density but antagonists at high density, etc. etc. etc.
And that’s just a smattering of the stuff that we already know about. Our understanding of the complexity and subtlety of neuronal structures is increasing daily.
Come on, it’s not rocket science.
That said, I think the people they’ll be testing on are those with the most serious memory problems. I’ve seen folks who have no episodic memory beyond the last 15 minutes. If I were handed a consent form today asking if I’d like to be part of such an experiment, should my memory deteriorate to that point, I’d sign up. Wouldn’t you?
