Biology nerds needed in a D project!

[Russel Winder]

On Fri, 2019-05-24 at 00:10 +0000, Alex via Digitalmars-d-announce
wrote:
> On Thursday, 23 May 2019 at 23:17:08 UTC, Murilo wrote:
> > Guys I'm trying to make a program that simulates a neuron which 
> > behaves like the Physarum polycephalum so it will be able to 
> > develop intelligence. I'm making it totally in the D 
> > programming language. I will need help from biology nerds. If 
> > you want to participate you can contact me:

I am not an expert in this, but would a neuron (from whatever beastie)
ever behave like a slime mould?

> > 1- on my GitHub: https://github.com/MuriloMir
> > or
> > 2- via e-mail: murilomiranda92 at hotmail.com
> > or
> > 3- via the Dlang facebook group: 
> > https://www.facebook.com/groups/662119670846705/
> > or
> > 4- on my twitter: https://twitter.com/MuriloMN0
> 
> It doesn't matter how you model a neuron. Whatever sigmoid 
> function you use will end up converging to the same result. All 
> neurons function in the same way, and that is as a switch. This 
> is why you can use all kinds of stuff for switches and it work.

Is a sigmoid function sufficient? The era of treating a neuron as
purely a single dimensional (electrical) state has, I believe, long
past. Neurons do trigger, but they also have a biochemical aspect as
well as an electrical one. I am not up to date with modelling neurons,
and neither am I an expert in neurochemistry, and whilst investigating
a network of sigmoid function triggers is still valid as a fun thing to
do, I am not sure it can now be seen as a model of a collection of
neurons.

A model that started up in the mid to late 1970s but didn't take off
then, but I believe is being picked up again recently, is to treat a
network of neurons embedded in a biochemical system as a set of fields.
The background was relativistic quantum field theory, but I suspect the
technique as applied to networks of neurons has evolved away from that
background. But maybe this is still not a mainstream approach?

Does anyone have any connection with people working on Blue Brain. Over
decade ago they were modelling the neocortex and neurons with
apparently good success.

> It seems that as long as they mimic a step function then it will 
> work.
> 
> I'd suggest you design your algorithms around using a generic 
> neuron and then you can play around with specific implementations.


-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk

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