Other uses for A.I. and Neural Nets

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Would it ever be possible for a Neural Net, for example, to be so accurately modeled after the human brain that diagnosing and treating mental disorders (neurological or psychological) correctly could be an eventuality?

I'm starting university again soon, and I plan to make neuroscience my field of study. I just want to be sure that I'm not hoping for something ridiculous and impossible.

Ha ha ha ha.

Probably not... But who knows? Perhaps I am wrong.

Technology is getting very advanced, though. Soon, society should have many more uses for the pattern recognition that neural nets are good at.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6600965.stm

Anyways, I'm not an expert on A.I, however, but I would like a good book that would inform me about the future and I am very hesitant for finding anything in case that could be inaccurate. But I can rely on the pace of computer advancement and miniturization to continue.

About the diagnoses thing: Usually, I think that people who have mental disorders think that treatment/medication is a good thing. But its actually very crude. There is a lot more to the brain than the few chemicals we modify that the pills we have out in contemporary society.

Why do people think that its always the answer? Its very annoying that everytime we have a problem, people push psychoactive medication. Can't we have problems and think that its normal?

This is the point I was too absent-minded to include in my post. I don't understand this need for drugs, this insatiable desire to numb the mind. My neuropsychologist described Electroconvulsive Therapy rather aptly, "It's like people hitting the t.v. and hoping it works." Psychiatry as is currently practiced is simply another form of barbarism. If one could actually see what was wrong with the mind (I'm referring more here to schizophrenia and other serious disorders of the mind), theoretically, a cure or treatment could be sought. I've seen this experimentation make things worse, so I'm really hoping for something more scientific. Or at least less harmful.



I can't argue with this line of thinking at all, but your wording makes it convoluted. "Problem" naturally indicates something abnormal, but difference can be accepted into the behavioral lexicon. I personally don't see high-functioning Asperger's (for instance) as a huge problem; others certainly have a different view. This is part of the subjectivity that makes up the concept of normality. Diversity is what makes life. Even rocks have diversity. Simple mental diversity isn't the problem, it's people diagnosing it and making it seem wrong, by giving it horrible names. I daydream a lot, so I have "Depersonalization Disorder." This just seems wrong somehow, and while the eccentric in me wants labels like this to vanish, the scientist in me wants to classify everything.

I agree with your statement.

I've been thinking about this lately which is why I have all this written down in response. It interests me.

Confusingly, the only thing that I found use to work with when I try to explain other people and myself is the diagnoses scheme that has been made by the authority of people in our culture. It is not illegal to have another point of veiw, of course, its just that its easier for me and my mental capacity to work with the most easiest and dominant descriptions of things that there is. And I actually have found use for some crude forms of personality profiling these past couple of years: "introverted" or "multitasking" in place of a.d.d and a.d.h.d etc.

Diagnoses is actually something convuluted in itself if you stop and think about it but it does kind of match my mentality when I want to explain how people are because its the first thing that comes to mind. It is also an assumption that it might be a negative thing to speak my mind when I post at wrongplanet.net because, based on past experience and paranoia, some people on these forums get offended or very annoyed if I make an anti-psychiatry statement.

But what I meant by "being normal" in my previous message was not that one goes on with unsolved problems but that one is diverse yet has struggles that they would like to ease the pain of and help liberate themselves in any way neccessary...

If we can't call something by the name of its disease then how do we word it? I beleive that firstly, we as a culture need to over-come that and then we can advance on to something like that you were saying. Probably far off into the futer when we can understand the brain and its genetic information, it may be possible to do such things with a computer - to simulate something at least similar to a mental disorder in the brain.

The latest thing that world scientists have out, though, is knockout mice i.e genetically modified mice to model mental disorders and especially neurological disorders. Every year, there is a new biochemical model it seems like. Still many more genes to go, right?

I think that anything is possible as long as we know how the brain functions and can have the technology to support the accuracy of how the brain functions. How far scientists can get depends on whatever will work.

What you may find is a way to model and understand something that looks like a disorder but is actually an alternative mode of operation. I wonder what would qualify?

Recent developments in quantum computer research are making it possible to construct a true quantum computer. A quantum neural net would be fast enough to outrun the human brain so that a brain-damaged person could have the future progression of damage estimated and stopped in advance. This will also need extremely fast and detailed mapping of the patient's neurons and connections, so it would be a quantum computer programming a quantum neural net. Once that's done, will the person exist in their body AND the neural net at the same time?

I agree totally and love the idea you mentioned about mapping a brain, would we "grow" into it? Its an old philosphical question. Another idea people had was if you made each electron communicate by radio waves and seperated a brain into individual neurons, spacing them out say each one miles apart, would we still function and have conciousness?

The brain is not just a neural net though its also a mass of chemicals and neuro transmitters, it sits in a soup, we have a bad day just as much if we dont have enough sugar intake as when everyone is horrible to us. Plus mathematical neural nets generally have a different formulae and make up than brain neurons currently, brain neurons spike, some people have tried to model this.

I only have a degree in AI, so dont know much about neurology.

But Neural Nets are a bit like black boxes, even after weve written them we dont understand how they work. If you did model a brain completely its my opinion youd know no more than when you started, youd better understand the chemistry perhaps from your model (hence more drugs), and even how it grows and learns, but not necessarily the pathways or (if you consider them as faults, I dont) faults. Perhaps what they could do, if they considered things as faults, is interject during the brains development, say in young children, guiding the growth of the brain to a different direction, if it strays from the developmental path they want.

From personal opinion, psychartrists try to "nudge" the brain in a certain direction when they feel its going the wrong way, try and rebalance the seesaw, but they dont yet have the understanding to change it (I question whether they could in a fully grown adult when its a fully developed brain). Just like if you feel bad you might eat a choclate bar and fire your endorphines, for a little "rush", to feel better and stabalise your blood sugar levels. Or cure yourself of sobriety with alcohol.

I think from what I know the chemistry of the brain is beyond human understanding for one person alone, you only have to look at all the misdiagnosis on here that have happened to people. But perhaps we could have psychartrists that specialise in different parts of the brain in future as we know more, like we have a liver specialist or kidney specialist, so we too could have a seretonin, dopamine or visual cortex specialist. As the information increases, so does the lack of ability for one person to know all of it. We have this to some extent already Im sure though, psychatrists will have their specialities. Just as we have psychologists and psychartrists for example.

related:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5287254.stm
lots of PS3 acting as a huge processor to find a cure for Alzheimer, cancer and other diseases