

Scans reveal intricate brain wiring - haven
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21487016

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uvdiv
Raw data!

[http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/2012/01/first-
public-r...](http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/2012/01/first-public-
release-of-3t-connectom-scanner-data/)

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peterhajas
It's unfortunate that you have to apply for access. Why force people to jump
through hoops? Expose this data.

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hollerith
Maybe they do not want to happen to the public image of brain research what
happened to the public image of AOL after AOL released to the public a few
tens or hundreds or megs of search queries for research purposes.

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jacquesm
You mean someone will combine this with the netflix database and will proceed
to de-anonymize this based on what they were thinking during the scan?

The AOL data release was a total fiasco in that it wasn't anonymized properly
and because they were not aware of the state of the art.

And it is not like they are not releasing it, they are releasing it! Just not
on an instantaneous download.

As for AOL, I'm quite grateful they did what they did, I got quite a bit of
mileage out of their data.

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hollerith
>You mean someone will combine this with the netflix database and will proceed
to de-anonymize this based on what they were thinking during the scan?

There is a saying on the web site _Less Wrong_ that "nobody knows what science
does not know." In other words, people tend to be too quick to leap to the
conclusion that a particular feat involving science is impossible.

I also note that you have no personal stake in the question. If your
scientific career or your ability to continue to win research grants were at
risk, you might not be so confident in your belief that it would be impossible
for anyone to misuse the data in a way that harms your reputation or the
reputations of people you depend on or care about.

(There is a small chance I could be wrong in inferring that that is indeed
your belief, in which case, ignore the above.)

Note that I am not asserting that the researchers _should_ limit distribution
of the data or that doing so would have net positive effect on society. I am
just saying that is a rational decision for researchers who care about their
careers to make.

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jacquesm
I think that being careful with medical data is an excellent idea. At the same
time I can't see any harm coming from releasing this particular data as long
as it has absolutely no meta data associated with it. Just the raw scans
should be enough to satisfy anybody's curiosity. If they need more for
whatever reason then they should have their credentials and needs checked on a
case-by-case basis.

Mis-use of such data would require at least a hypothetical scenario, and
stating that would bolster the reason why the data was not released without
restriction.

But better safe than sorry.

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gmig
"Only 50 such scans have ever been done."

"The aim the $40m programme is to map the entire human neural wiring system by
scanning the brains of 1,200 Americans."

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protothomas
Look at what happened with DNA sequencing[1]. Linear extrapolation isn't
always the best predictor of progress.

[1] <http://www.dnasequencing.org/history-of-dna>

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Tomino
Awesome, this kind of things really amaze me. I'm just curious what are the
possibilities once they have everything scanned. Yes we can probably cure some
disease or fix some stuff, but that's kind of old news, I am more interested
in what they can actually do. Can they upload new language into your brain? or
what else?

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cpressey
Perhaps you just worded that sloppily, but why do you consider curing "some
disease", like, say, schizophrenia or Alzheimer's, would not be "actually
doing" something?

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Tomino
Yes I did probably word it wrong, of course to cure these diseases is awesome,
but we kind of know what the potential is there, I am more interested in what
other potentials, apart from diseases, are there

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wcoenen
This TED video is a good explanation of the concept of a "connectome" for the
layman: <http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung.html>

The simple connectome of c. elegans has been mapped, and there is an open
source project to use this dataset and other data to run a full simulation of
the worm in a virtual environment: <http://openworm.org>

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hmexx
Pretty cool.

I wonder what fraction of the wiring in the brain these represent.

I guess these are only the largest "pathway" structures?

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JoeAltmaier
Can't imagine what those few thick rendered wires represent in a brain. Do
they stand for signals by strength? Why can't we see how they terminate? Why
are the bundles seemingly unconnected with one another?

I didn't get any insight from that graphic. For $40M I hope they have some
better results than that.

