[Hplusroadmap] Brain compilers

[Bryan Bishop]

One of the topics that I have been meaning to hack out an email about is 
a brain compiler, a piece of software to assemble brains that meet our 
specifications. What is the brain made up of? On the low level, it's 
all biomolecules, DNA, ion channels (proteins nested in the plasma 
membrane), then the next scale up there are types of neurons and 
dendritic trees, various rules that you can successfully use to model 
neuron behavior; then the next scale up you have minicolumns in the 
neocortical cortex, and these 'voxels' are managed for voltage, have 
spill-over between each other, inhibitor and enhancing effects, etc. 
Then from here you can continue to build it all up into the complete 
brain. A brain compiler, in particular, would be a way of 
systematically importing discrete features into the finished design and 
compiling it all together on a low level, encoded in DNA [or possibly 
multiple strands of DNA for a distributed brain? i.e., connect 
neuropods (from [[neurofarm]] on the wiki) together]. 
http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/Neurofarm

What would this be useful for? Just as you can digitize genes, you could 
digitize minicolumns, units of functionality of the brain, you could 
have a brain architecture where it would be easy to import new 'memes' 
and neural structures. "Woah, I know kung fu."

Other possible uses:
* engineering something that you think is close to you
* building characters (reincarnate Leibniz and Feynman)
** or maybe Anakin Skywalker, Thomas A. Anderson, ...
* downloading brain parts
* downloading perceptions
* using genetic algorithms to construct new perceptions
* making more accessible brains
** do something with all that information you can't write down
* learn something about yourself,

	What I cannot create, I do not understand.
		-- Feynman

- Bryan
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http://heybryan.org/