O.I. Electrophysiology

This revision is from 2024/07/08 09:20. You can Restore it.

Three major issues with O.I...

  1. Lifespan: while non-dviding cells are potentially immortal, current lifespan only about 100 days.
  2. Size: they are too small, only about a grain of salt. The bigger the organoid the more intelligence.
  3. Communication: the input, output system and effective training and communication.

Electrophysiology in O.I. is the study of neuron electrical system for the result that communication methods can be formed. The two known communication systems in the human body, chemical and electrical. While humans have five senses, the basic sense of a neuron is the electrical gradient (its associated field) and about 100 chemicals such as dopamine called neurotransmitters. The language changes the mode of the cell, initiates functions from its DNA manifold.

Each time we communicate with a neuron we are forming a sense for the neuron. The human bodies 5 senses are multi-modal, general, contrast, a specialized sense such as flying a plane, solving puzzles or playing a video game.

Work on electrophysiology is essential, some of the most basic animals sense their surroundings by electrical discharge on contact, maintaining a basic voltage with any discharge meaning another object has touched or is near, another is seeing with magnetism.

Neurons maintain an electrical difference, commmunication with a neuron is a spike in the electrical gradient, polarization of the cell and that causes a neurotramitter to be released where onwards if causes some response. Action potentials, resting membrane potential, depolarization, repolarization, refractory period...

The most resonating example is fight or flight, a stimulus is detected by a sensor, triggers an action potential that sends a signal to the brain, which then releases norepinephrine, priming the body into fight or flight. If the response is successful, such as catching prey, eating causes a new stimulus to be generated, which triggers the release of dopamine in the brain, reinforcing the behavior and creating a positive association. This cycle of stimulus, response, and reward helps to solidify the behavior, making it more likely to occur in similar situations in the future.

The most common circuit in the human body is the feedback loop, homeostasis, for instance let's look at hunger. Huger creates an impetus, a challenge is associated with resolving the impetus, such as eating resolves the hunger condition. Upon feeding, sensors resolve the impetus and also send stimulus to the brain of success. Not forgetting, freedom of plasticity in the human body means tools can be formed for the challenge, such as hands. Levels rise triggering a sensor such as hunger, levels go back down turning off the sensor.

'''Between impetus, challenge, resolution, success on dopamine or serotonin on fail. The brain orientates itself towards getting the dopamine efficiently.'''

The operator stimulates the neuron gradient, action potentials to cause the release of neurotransmitters relative to an aim.

In the hunger example: the impetus is provided by ghrelin. Neuropeptide Y (NPY) and agouti-related peptide (AgRP) are neurotransmitters that stimulate appetite and increase food intake. Stretch receptors: The stomach has stretch receptors that detect the presence or absence of food. When the stomach is empty, these receptors send signals to the brain, which interprets them as hunger. Other receptors send information to the brain when food intake is detected. Injecting a challenge is important.

  • Reward: Dopamine
  • Punishment: Serotonin, perhaps Norepinephrine.

There are over 100-150 known neurotransmitters, narrowing it down to two is a punk out. Some others... acetylcholine (ACh), norepinephrine (NE), GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), glutamate, endorphins, histamine, melatonin, adrenaline (epinephrine)... Use an LLM and spent some time designing the circuit.

Different neurons are specialized to a task, for example dopamine neuron release dopamine and serotonin neurons release serotonin, so there are many neurons relative to their task such as visual cortex neurons, auditory cortex neurons, neo-cortex neurons, Von Economo neuron (VEN)...

One sensor goes to one neuron type, in current organoid intelligence, one electrical pad in a multi electrical array is dedicated to one task. 1 stimulus is connected to 1 sensor and always goes to the 1 pad to the same group of neurons. The design relies on re-enforcement learning, operant conditioning. If the neurons exhibit the desired output, it gets a reward such as dopamine or a punishment such as serotonin. You do not have to starve the organoid of new and more sensors, information. Take for example a path finding challenge, placing the dopamine at the goal and saying nothing more. With trial and error the path will be worked out, subsequently the circuit will know how to get the dopamine more quickly.

one stimuli --> sensor --> wire --> pad activation --> specific neuron around one electrical pad in the multi electrode array --> onwards... --> upon success activate dopamine neurons or supply dopamine directly.

The method of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) selection of differentiation into a specific neuron type.

O.I. and Building Multi-Modal Sensory Systems

While important, this is all too small in scale. At some stage, multi-modal senses are required because most applications fall into a general permanent sense. A repeatable organoid construction could facilitate most applications. This is far cry, as organoids are only about the size of a grain of salt at the moment. Organoids can always be more effective using modularization, with a model of the brain tanslated into O.I, with regional, partitioned function of a single organoid or multiple specialized organoids interconnected via an artificial synapse. Organoids need to get more complex and larger.

Propose 4 senses, two input and two output.

These senses are electrode arrays that are converted to an electrical form and sent to the organoid. These peripherals are not biological, they are electronic. The 4 senses...

'''Input'''

  • Sight, photosensor array to electric conversion and transmission to organoid. Basically a camera.
  • Hearing electrode array, basically a microphone, again for the sake of simplcity it might be a frequency/amplitude array.

'''Output'''

  • Voice electrode array, basically a speaker, where the electrical signals produced by the organoid makes sound out of the speaker.
  • Visual electrode array, basically a T.V, where the electrical signals produced by the organoid can generate an image on the T.V.

The organoid is trained to use these input and output devices. A.I. LLM trainers, educators, filters, such as LLM english language trainer where the operant conditioning program is the English language.

'''We can already read brain signals and map them to sights and sounds.''' Technology is available for about one hundred years now that records the spatial activity of the brain both as a sound input and the brain activity when a person generates speech and knows what the person is saying from the activations. We can use these technologies to build multi-sensory systems and understand what the organoid is saying after training. See brain–computer interface.