Почему коннектом червя не дает психику | Владимир Алипов

The talk begins with a brief discussion of Cortical Labs and their work with biological cell cultures for neuroscience research, noting that many neurobiologists are skeptical of cell cultures but that Cortical Labs may be revitalizing the field by demonstrating reliable learning in vitro. Alipov also explains the methods for obtaining neurons for culture, including harvesting from embryos, inducing adult cells into stem cells, and even growing personalized brain organoids from a specific patient's cells — raising ethical questions about exploiting someone's cellular properties.

The main focus shifts to connectome modeling, specifically the OpenWorm project, which attempts to simulate the complete nervous system of the nematode C. elegans (302 neurons) inside a virtual body in a virtual environment. Alipov explains that three models are needed for such a simulation: a brain model, a body model, and an environment model. While OpenWorm has achieved some success in reproducing simple behaviors like crawling, it has failed to simulate more complex behaviors such as social interaction, mating, and associative learning.

Alipov identifies several reasons for these failures: the neuron models used are overly simplified (not even Hodgkin-Huxley level), the model omits modulatory synaptic effects, and crucially, it treats the connectome as a static structure rather than a dynamic one. He emphasizes that synaptic connections change continuously as an organism interacts with its environment — a process called synaptic plasticity — and that this dynamic nature is essential for reproducing real behavior. The talk concludes that the OpenWorm simulation has no psyche, soul, or consciousness, and that a static connectome snapshot is fundamentally insufficient to model the mind.