I have a new queen. Lasius brevicornis. The queen is about 9mm Her nanitics are so tiny I'm going to cry. They are 1.5mm and transparent yellow.
They are smaller than the antennae on my Camponotus pennsylvanicus queen. Nanitics are the first workers in a colony and they are often smaller than the workers produced later when the colony is better established. But this is out of control. They are just so small.
They would make a fruit fly look like an elephant.
They still have six legs, tiny mandibles and tiny ant intentions and projects they are working on with their mother.
What do they have in their legs? One muscle fiber per joint?
They are so complex and tiny it's breaking my brain a little.
I don't understand why people aren't freaked about about this more often.
You can fit a VERY long program in a VERY little head. I think the huge mistake computer scientists make when thinking about modeling brains is to think of the neuron as analogous to a transistor. Every neuron is a whole-ass computer and can do fairly sophisticated computation; the best transistor analog, I believe, is a channel protein in the neuronal membrane. (A couple nanometers wide.)
Yes. Even worse, axons do logic computations locally and independently.
A generic neocortex neuron has hundreds of inputs and thousands of outputs (synapses).
A cubic milimeter of mouse cortex has about 7 friggin' kilometers of axon.
And information may be stored in the connections, not as weights.
Bottom line: the "neural network" idea is dead wrong on a plethora of levels.
But don't blame comp. sci. folks. We're willing to learn. It's the AI bros who ain't.
@djl @stevegis_ssg @futurebird Not to mention that it's looking more and more like ignoring astrocytes and microglia in favor of neurons misses out on pretty much all the important details of how learning happens *and* what moods are.
I saw some recent research with mice suggesting that astrocytes might release adenosine as a neuromodulator to trigger boredom/futility, i.e. "change your strategy, you're wasting your time". AIUI it was already known that adenosine buildup seems to correlate with sleepiness, but apparently it also has a more short-term significance.
myrmepropagandist
Steve Gisselbrecht
David, a Bostonian in Tokyo.
heptapodEnthusiast 🏳️🌈