Diana Deca | NTNU - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Diana Deca
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Dec 1, 2013
In order to grasp the entire complexity of the human nervous system, one needs to understand its ... more In order to grasp the entire complexity of the human nervous system, one needs to understand its physical substrate. Down to which level should a whole brain emulation keep all the structural details of the brain in order to achieve all of the functions of the biological brain? While a computer program could easily be emulated in order to achieve the same specified function, the human brain is a special case because of its enormously complex functions. For this reason, causal relations between brain structure and function are currently being made in neuroscience. Neuroscientific research is in this sense supporting WBE and therefore AGI, by providing important data, models and simulations of brain functions. The goals of this paper are to review the challenges for gathering and assembling connectome data and to provide directions for overcoming these challenges. Finally, the implications for AGI will be discussed.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014
The unique way in which each of us perceives the world must arise from our brain representations.... more The unique way in which each of us perceives the world must arise from our brain representations. If brain imaging could reveal an individual's unique mental representation, it could help us understand the biological substrate of our individual experiential worlds in mental health and disease. However, imaging studies of object vision have focused on commonalities between individuals rather than individual differences and on category averages rather than representations of particular objects. Here we investigate the individually unique component of brain representations of particular objects with functional MRI (fMRI). Subjects were presented with unfamiliar and personally meaningful object images while we measured their brain activity on two separate days. We characterized the representational geometry by the dissimilarity matrix of activity patterns elicited by particular object images. The representational geometry remained stable across scanning days and was unique in each individual in early visual cortex and human inferior temporal cortex (hIT). The hIT representation predicted perceived similarity as reflected in dissimilarity judgments. Importantly, hIT predicted the individually unique component of the judgments when the objects were personally meaningful. Our results suggest that hIT brain representational idiosyncrasies accessible to fMRI are expressed in an individual's perceptual judgments. The unique way each of us perceives the world thus might reflect the individually unique representation in high-level visual areas.
Journal of Artificial General Intelligence, 2013
Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 2014
Cell calcium, Jan 12, 2015
Microglia are the resident macrophage and immune cell of the brain and are critically involved in... more Microglia are the resident macrophage and immune cell of the brain and are critically involved in combating disease and assaults on the brain. Virtually all brain pathologies are accompanied by acidosis of the interstitial fluid, meaning that microglia are exposed to an acidic environment. However, little is known about how extracellular acidosis impacts on microglial function. The activity of microglia is tightly controlled by 'on' and 'off' signals, the presence or absence of which results in generation of distinct phenotypes in microglia. Activation of G protein coupled purinergic (P2Y) receptors triggers a number of distinct behaviours in microglia, including activation, migration, and phagocytosis. Using pharmacological tools and fluorescence imaging of the murine cerebellar microglia cell line C8B4, we show that extracellular acidosis interferes with P2Y receptor-mediated Ca(2+) signalling in these cells. Distinct P2Y receptors give rise to signature intracellu...
A scientific publication system needs to provide two basic services: access and evaluation. The t... more A scientific publication system needs to provide two basic services: access and evaluation. The traditional publication system restricts the access to papers by requiring payment, and it restricts the evaluation of papers by relying on just 2–4 pre-publication peer reviews and by keeping the reviews secret. As a result, the current system suffers from a lack of quality and transparency of the peer review process, and the only immediately available indication of a new paper's quality is the prestige of the journal it appeared in.
worldscinet.com
Whole brain emulation (WBE) has been, for a long time, the subject of interest for many science f... more Whole brain emulation (WBE) has been, for a long time, the subject of interest for many science fiction productions and a subject for debate for many philosophers. This is one of the reasons why many mainstream scientists have remained skeptical about a scientifically sound approach to it. Whole brain emulation might be considered more complex than it actually is because of all the philosophical and methodological issues that people have been pointing out in the last decade. However, not everything that every brain and computer scientist had ever said needs to be taken into account when designing a realistic brain emulation system. In this paper I would like to give a brief overview of the relevant research for WBE coming from the neurosciences and how it can be combined with other disciplines in order to achieve the goals of WBE. Whole brain emulation (WBE) has been, for a long time, the subject of interest for many science fiction productions and a subject for debate for many philosophers. This is one of the reasons why many mainstream scientists have remained skeptical about a scientifically sound approach to it. Whole brain emulation might be considered more complex than it actually is because of all the philosophical and methodological issues that people have been pointing out in the last decade. However, not everything that every brain and computer scientist had ever said needs to be taken into account when designing a realistic brain emulation system. In this paper I would like to give a brief overview of the relevant research for WBE coming from the neurosciences and how it can be combined with other disciplines in order to achieve the goals of WBE.
Talks by Diana Deca
In order to grasp the entire complexity of the human nervous system, one needs to understand its ... more In order to grasp the entire complexity of the human nervous system, one needs to understand its physical substrate. Down to which level should a whole brain emulation keep all the structural details of the brain in order to achieve all of the functions of the biological brain? While a computer program could easily be emulated in order to achieve the same specified function, the human brain is a special case because of its enormously complex functions. For this reason, causal relations between brain structure and function are currently being made in neuroscience. Neuroscientific research is in this sense supporting WBE and therefore AGI, by providing important data, models and simulations of brain functions. The goals of this paper are to review the challenges for gathering and assembling connectome data and to provide directions for overcoming these challenges. Finally, the implications for AGI will be discussed.
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Dec 1, 2013
In order to grasp the entire complexity of the human nervous system, one needs to understand its ... more In order to grasp the entire complexity of the human nervous system, one needs to understand its physical substrate. Down to which level should a whole brain emulation keep all the structural details of the brain in order to achieve all of the functions of the biological brain? While a computer program could easily be emulated in order to achieve the same specified function, the human brain is a special case because of its enormously complex functions. For this reason, causal relations between brain structure and function are currently being made in neuroscience. Neuroscientific research is in this sense supporting WBE and therefore AGI, by providing important data, models and simulations of brain functions. The goals of this paper are to review the challenges for gathering and assembling connectome data and to provide directions for overcoming these challenges. Finally, the implications for AGI will be discussed.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014
The unique way in which each of us perceives the world must arise from our brain representations.... more The unique way in which each of us perceives the world must arise from our brain representations. If brain imaging could reveal an individual's unique mental representation, it could help us understand the biological substrate of our individual experiential worlds in mental health and disease. However, imaging studies of object vision have focused on commonalities between individuals rather than individual differences and on category averages rather than representations of particular objects. Here we investigate the individually unique component of brain representations of particular objects with functional MRI (fMRI). Subjects were presented with unfamiliar and personally meaningful object images while we measured their brain activity on two separate days. We characterized the representational geometry by the dissimilarity matrix of activity patterns elicited by particular object images. The representational geometry remained stable across scanning days and was unique in each individual in early visual cortex and human inferior temporal cortex (hIT). The hIT representation predicted perceived similarity as reflected in dissimilarity judgments. Importantly, hIT predicted the individually unique component of the judgments when the objects were personally meaningful. Our results suggest that hIT brain representational idiosyncrasies accessible to fMRI are expressed in an individual's perceptual judgments. The unique way each of us perceives the world thus might reflect the individually unique representation in high-level visual areas.
Journal of Artificial General Intelligence, 2013
Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 2014
Cell calcium, Jan 12, 2015
Microglia are the resident macrophage and immune cell of the brain and are critically involved in... more Microglia are the resident macrophage and immune cell of the brain and are critically involved in combating disease and assaults on the brain. Virtually all brain pathologies are accompanied by acidosis of the interstitial fluid, meaning that microglia are exposed to an acidic environment. However, little is known about how extracellular acidosis impacts on microglial function. The activity of microglia is tightly controlled by 'on' and 'off' signals, the presence or absence of which results in generation of distinct phenotypes in microglia. Activation of G protein coupled purinergic (P2Y) receptors triggers a number of distinct behaviours in microglia, including activation, migration, and phagocytosis. Using pharmacological tools and fluorescence imaging of the murine cerebellar microglia cell line C8B4, we show that extracellular acidosis interferes with P2Y receptor-mediated Ca(2+) signalling in these cells. Distinct P2Y receptors give rise to signature intracellu...
A scientific publication system needs to provide two basic services: access and evaluation. The t... more A scientific publication system needs to provide two basic services: access and evaluation. The traditional publication system restricts the access to papers by requiring payment, and it restricts the evaluation of papers by relying on just 2–4 pre-publication peer reviews and by keeping the reviews secret. As a result, the current system suffers from a lack of quality and transparency of the peer review process, and the only immediately available indication of a new paper's quality is the prestige of the journal it appeared in.
worldscinet.com
Whole brain emulation (WBE) has been, for a long time, the subject of interest for many science f... more Whole brain emulation (WBE) has been, for a long time, the subject of interest for many science fiction productions and a subject for debate for many philosophers. This is one of the reasons why many mainstream scientists have remained skeptical about a scientifically sound approach to it. Whole brain emulation might be considered more complex than it actually is because of all the philosophical and methodological issues that people have been pointing out in the last decade. However, not everything that every brain and computer scientist had ever said needs to be taken into account when designing a realistic brain emulation system. In this paper I would like to give a brief overview of the relevant research for WBE coming from the neurosciences and how it can be combined with other disciplines in order to achieve the goals of WBE. Whole brain emulation (WBE) has been, for a long time, the subject of interest for many science fiction productions and a subject for debate for many philosophers. This is one of the reasons why many mainstream scientists have remained skeptical about a scientifically sound approach to it. Whole brain emulation might be considered more complex than it actually is because of all the philosophical and methodological issues that people have been pointing out in the last decade. However, not everything that every brain and computer scientist had ever said needs to be taken into account when designing a realistic brain emulation system. In this paper I would like to give a brief overview of the relevant research for WBE coming from the neurosciences and how it can be combined with other disciplines in order to achieve the goals of WBE.
In order to grasp the entire complexity of the human nervous system, one needs to understand its ... more In order to grasp the entire complexity of the human nervous system, one needs to understand its physical substrate. Down to which level should a whole brain emulation keep all the structural details of the brain in order to achieve all of the functions of the biological brain? While a computer program could easily be emulated in order to achieve the same specified function, the human brain is a special case because of its enormously complex functions. For this reason, causal relations between brain structure and function are currently being made in neuroscience. Neuroscientific research is in this sense supporting WBE and therefore AGI, by providing important data, models and simulations of brain functions. The goals of this paper are to review the challenges for gathering and assembling connectome data and to provide directions for overcoming these challenges. Finally, the implications for AGI will be discussed.