Taking a break to play a game or solve a puzzle is always a good idea. And of course, what better idea than to flex your eyes and mind... for Science? Neurobiologists at MIT have been trying to reveal the intricate wiring of the neurons that are sending data between your eyes and your brain. As you read this, 8.96 Megabits of data are being sent via your optical nerve per second. Untangling these neurons is a maddening task - far beyond a computer to do so. But a combination of crowdsourcing, gaming and an Artificial Intelligence could.
EyeWire is a game where you earn points for selectively colouring in each nerve across a slice of tissue. "We need people to help us," says Sebastian Seung, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "There's no way the professional scientists alone can analyze all of that." From the onset, it looks fairly simple - silly and unappealing really. But once you begin to play, you learn how difficult (and thus entertaining) it becomes.
The unique structure of our neural networks that reside in our brains catches much of the colouring that a separate AI misses. This partnership allows for a measure of redundancy, improving the quality of results. The problem for MIT researchers was the sheer amount of work to do - billions of neurons and only a small team. By making EyeWire, they hope to tap a few of the estimated 3 billion hours spent per week on gaming (and GrabCAD).
"Anyone sitting in their living room can just fire up a Web browser and look at images of neurons, and help us figure out how they're connected." says Sebastian. So far 35,000 users have jumped on. I was one of them. After taking the 6-step tutorial, I was colouring away, trying to fill in a single nerve without making a mistake. It was a lot harder than I expected. For a few moments I was genuinely angry that I earned a number of errors for one I was certain was correctly coloured. Angry, at a nerve ending. Stranger things have happened. But in the end, I was rewarded, generating a little jump for joy (in a public café no less)
EyeWire really does get you to think 3D. The twists and turns and organic curves of a single nerve is something to marvel. The more MIT collects from the incessant clicking and colouring, the more they learn about the deep structure of the brain. And the more their AI learns how to identify how to colour the nerves properly, just like teaching a robotic arm to do a task. Perhaps, with this constructed 3D model of the brain, we can print on? The mind boggles.
Give it a whirl!
