
Math That May Have Mapped the Brain in 11 Dimensions - danielmorozoff
https://www.wired.com/story/the-mind-boggling-math-that-maybe-mapped-the-brain-in-11-dimensions/
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aschampion
Hess and Markram didn't invent topological analysis of neuronal networks. They
are not mapping the brain. This is a fluff piece that didn't bother to check
with anyone else in the field if this paper is as groundbreaking as it's being
presented, which is the absolute minimum of journalistic rigor.

The claim this ended up in Frontiers because no one else in neuro theory has
heard of algebraic topology is laughable.

e: To be clear, I don't think this rises to the level of "Sokal hoax" \-- it
looks like an interesting result. I also have an interest in the role massive
simulation can play in discovery. But to misrepresent topological analysis as
an entirely novel approach or package it with phys.org-press-release nonsense
like "mapping the brain in 11 dimensions" is both a disservice to the rich
field on which it's building and adds noise to public communication about
neuroscience, which is already plagued with bullshit.

~~~
fjdlwlv
Tells:

* site=wired.com * "may have" weasel wording

The unfortunate pattern in pop science is the hero complex: the journalist
learns about a field and feels a need to give all the credit to one person or
small team, and to five them an adversary, to make the story seem dramatic,
revolutionary, yet accessible. The real stories are too large and complex to
make exciting in a quick read to a layperson.

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rwnspace
Hmmmm. "Hess says they tried to shop around the idea to other neuroscience
journals first, to avoid the conflict of interest—but didn’t have much luck,
since most editors they spoke to had never heard of algebraic topology".

Neuroscience as a field is quite comfortable with 'n-dimensions', given the
importance of matrices to data. Let alone the relationship between topology
and graph/network theory... It seems highly unlikely that editors would not be
at least roughly familiar with algebraic topology. It reads (to me), "Our
research is not marketable, because it lacks prescriptive insight, so we
published it in our own journal". The conflict of interest statement in the
paper is suspect, as the article roughly mentions.

From the abstract: "We propose that the brain processes stimuli by forming
increasingly complex functional cliques and cavities". I can't see how this
says anything not already well-established, though perhaps differently
described - that biological structures in the brain support the use of
hierarchical network models at the neuronal IP level.

Anecdotally, I find the 'jargonification' of neuroscience a little disturbing.
This reads like false progress. I'm simply an interested lay-person, so I'm
open to correction on all the above - but as I see it, additional ways of
describing 'what' does not necessarily give a 'how'.

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zamalek
> I can't see how this says anything not already well-established

I am not a neuroscientist. It sounds like the cavities are orderly in 11
dimensions, whereas previously they seemed chaotic - the "shape of the
activity" (i.e. something akin to a fMRI) is structured. This is different to
the mathematical model of a neuron (being the matrix you mentioned).

I could also be reading this incorrectly.

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jamestimmins
This article about mapping the brain used the expression 'lol' in the first
paragraph. I don't think it's nitpicking to say that significantly undercuts
the seriousness with which I read the article.

~~~
coldtea
The lol is perfectly appropriate in the context it is used:

 _KATHRYN HESS CAN’T tell the difference between a coffee mug and a bagel.
That’s the old joke anyway. Hess, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology, is one of the world’s leading thinkers in the field of
algebraic topology—in super simplified terms, the mathematics of rubbery
shapes. It uses algebra to attack the following question: If given two
geometric objects, can you deform one to another without making any cuts? The
answer, when it comes to bagels and coffee mugs, is yes, yes you can. (They
only have one hole apiece, lol.)_

I'm not sure what the people who are taken aback by it usually read -- or what
did they expect to find here.

~~~
Cozumel
> I'm not sure what the people who are taken aback by it usually read -- or
> what did they expect to find here.

They don't understand what they're reading, so instead of asking for an
explanation, they attack the lowest hanging fruit (the 'lol').

It's just a form of position signalling, basically they assume everyone else
understands it and they want to be in that 'in-group', so they try and look
smart by tearing it down by attacking nothings.

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kej
Only distantly related, but the title reminds me of line from AI (pseudo-?)
researcher Chris McKinstry[1]'s web suicide note:

>Oh and BTW, the mind is a maximum hypersurface and thought a trajectory on it
and the amygdala and hippocampus are Hopf maps of it. No one knew this before
me, and it seems no one care. So be it. My time will come in a hundred or a
thousand years when the idea again returns.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McKinstry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McKinstry)

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ngcc_hk
It is waste of time to build telescope. What is the point. See the ship up
there. I know it is there.

What is the point of big data. What is the point of neural network. Waste of
time.

Until some point the telescope to what it is forbidden and said the forbidden
by a guy called ... what are those things around Jupiter. It can't exist as it
is not revolve around the earth

What is go? Silly game?

What is car drinking we can do it

... I guess to this silly scientific community it is just do not see beyond
the present paradigm.

This may provide a way to understand the upcoming AI via ... understanding.
What a waste of time!

