Digital Simulation - A Life Online

By: Aiden Kim

Pretty much every human in existence has thought of the simple question: is it possible to live forever? Theoretically? Maybe. But with the new discoveries comes new possibilities.

In recent times, scientists at UC berkeley were able to completely scan in and simulate a complete fruit fly brain, a landmark step in simulating neurological pathways.

Well, how did they do it?

Though this achievement is quite remarkable, the process of scanning a brain is still quite arduous. Even with a simple fly brain, the researchers needed to cut the brain into 7000 individual slices, scan each one, and arduously denote every neurological pathway to and from each neuron, a statistic that reaches a staggering 50 million connections in total.

After the initial scan, the brain parts still need to be simulated. Through the connectome, otherwise known as the figurative “map” of the brain, the researchers are able to simulate electrical impulses between neurons through a “leaky integrate-and-fire computational model” where a neuron is assumed to fire given enough receiving impulses. The researchers caution, however, that this model is yet to be robust enough to simulate every possible outcome that results from the intricate morphologies present in actual neurological activity. In addition, the fruit fly brain, although impressive, is still considerably smaller than that of a human brain, which is so inconceivably large that a scan of this method with current day technology and methodologies would not be possible.

In reality, this model was created to simply observe neurological generalizations that can be found within this model. Through this kind of computational observation, we could see scientists further understand the inner workings of our neurons, thus potentially helping us to alleviate neurological diseases such as epilepsy, where a miswiring of the brain may be to blame. Though this model may not be the miracle cure to death as we think, it may pave the way for future discovery.