What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018 

Summary: Bodies have bioelectrical patterns that store information "memories" separately from genomic, anatomical states. These bioelectrical patterns play a huge role in developmental processes, so that being able to control them is basically like a holy grail of regenerative medicine. It also offers interesting new insights for AI and cognition. Detailed notes: 2:55 memories are preserved in metamorphosis/regeneration. 5:16 unicelular creatures "think" 9:00 planarian can be cut into pieces and each will regrow to the correct full organism! Each piece knows about the whole (a bit like a hologram!), and can do collective decision-making to guide themselves to the correct structure (important to know when to stop 8:41). 9:21 planarians have conquered aging! (new favourite animal here) 10:00 further examples of pattern homeostasis (keeping its shape, robustly, to the programmed shape) 14:40 biology is dealing with hardware right now; can we move to dealing with software? 16:26 bioelectric mechanisms in brainn come from ancient mechanisms found in cells through the body 20:00 seeing cancer via electrical signal anomaly 20:20 how to control these bioelectric processes 22:20 editing the morphology of organisms, without changing the genome, just by interacting with the developmental processes! wow! 24:07 computational modeling 24:30 altering pattern memory. Wow, an electrical memory that holds information, separately from anatomy and genome! 27:34 extending connectionist models to understand this. Stable attractors (like Hopfield nets!) 28:31 applications in *regenerative medicine*. Making frogs regrow their legs! 29:20 and reversing birth defects. Hmm, it's really cool that you can bypass genomics, but this patterning only affects anatomy right? If a gene generating some protein essential for some biochemical pathway is missing, you can't fix it with bioelectrics right? See comments at 40:27 But still the applications seem awesome 30:50. The endgame. A biological compiler to design organisms. As Freeman Dyson wrote: "a new generation of artists will be writing, composing genomes with the fluency that Blake and Byron wrote verses" 31:40. The future. a highly-robust ML technology, based on non-neural architectures. I can smell our friend Physarum polycepharum appearing soon :P (didn't but would have been cool) 32:52 "non-neural networks" lol. Robot scientist lol. 33:36 Thank Q&A 34:36 difference between behavioural and anatomical electrical patterns, and how to control the anatomical ones. Anatomy at low frequencies, behavior at high frequncies; they are pretty well-separated. 37:18 best approach to create truly intelligent systems 39:30 what about plants, and mechanical signaling. Plants independently evolved bioelectric control. Mechanical forces interact with electrical effects (and also with genetics ofcourse). Key question: "at what point in that control structure is it most efficient to intervene" (to me the hardware-software divide is just about identifying the parts of a system that are more suitable for control 41:56 Consciousness. 44:12 Timescale of control signals. Very short interventions, as you are basically just rewriting the electrical memory :) 46:22 non-neural nets 48:23 Ethical concerns 49:42 relations to signal transduction networks and systems biology models 50:51 relation to reaction-diffusion models

Best talk I have ever seen in my life as a biochemist/immunologist. Mindblowing!

Holy smoke! This video is packed with amazing facts and stupendous possibilities.

And once again I think Tesla was spot on with his quote “ If you wish to understand the Universe think of energy, frequency and vibration. “ Thanks for this amazing presentation!

My vocabulary of bad words isn’t big enough to express how freakin mindblown I am after this.

This lab (and talk) will one day be in science history books. Well done. Nobel countdown begins.

Absolutely brilliant biological research. Novel, Provocative, and Cutting edge are the words that spring to mind! I belive nobel prize worthy!

Brilliant presentation, by a humble genius. Michael Levin was (~49min) anticipating problems with gene editing and chimeric viruses, back in 2018. Spot on.

definetly one of the best scientific talks I've seen online, absolutely fascinating......

A Nobel right there :-)

Thanks for sharing. Brilliant work. I'm a biologist in computer science, and clearly your talk resonates at many levels on my end. The mapping, understanding and most importantly modelling + simulation (=forcasting) of the different aspects and structures is key. Your decisions, flow of the experiments, and subsequent deductions are truly excellent. You've pushed the boundaries. Shifting what we know, and can anticipate. It'll be interesting to do this through simulations. At the detailed level. Mapping your software over underlying logical (=independent) entities. The overall structure should shape, create, and morph the functions of the cell dynamics. It'll speed up development, and will point to new logical components (at the electrical and molecular level). I'll be following this kind of work more attentively. This is the future!

Wow. Mind blown. Trully something new and innovative. Can't wait to see where it will head.

This really amazing content. I have watched it 3 times already

This is really amazing, my mind just blows up. Thanks for sharing.

Some of the most incredible and surprising research I've ever seen. Title seriously understates the significance of the results. Keep it up guys!

Wow. I don't often come across something that's completely new to me, but has such far reaching potential. I look forward to following the results of their ongoing work, especially as they further extend into mammalian systems.

incredible talk, thank you so much for sharing, and thank you to Michael Levin to present this work to a widely new audience for him. this is the kind of collaboration we want to see. of course i realize most of these ideas are still very immature in how to create machine learning algorithms inspired from them. but i hope his lab attracts the few scientists that will help bridging that gap. and who knows maybe i'll even apply one day! man i am so excited i have to punch a wall.

Brilliant research with huge future impact.

Fascinating talk. Those poor frogs and worms though... So much amputation!

Excellent talk! Really exciting work at the intersection of computation, biology, cognition, and regeneration!

Thanks for posting this, it was a great watch!

this has got to be nobel prize material

As a heart transplant patient, please check into 1. regeneration of a new heart using stored pattern info, 2. fix the rejection issue, so that transplanted organs work as normal in their new environment. Amazing talk, thanks.

Great Idea! Epic Discovery!

The healing processes we dreamed of as children coming true. If it were a Hollywood movie no one would believe it. Love the computational interpretation of biology.

This is not my discipline, BUT what this man and his group is working on is the holy grail of LIFE in the universe. WOW!

I really enjoyed this presentation.

Thanks this is really great work!

Truly amazing.

Incredible.

This is very interesting.

22:20 Mind blowing 🤯 26:25 Also mind blowing 🤯 41:56 Fascinating about consciousness through the Tree of Life, and ‘unlimited associative learning’ as key to consciousness 45:10 Wow interesting that so much can be achieved in regeneration even in a brief time, to get that sub-routine of building a thing running This notion that in biology that DNA is the hardware, and something else is the software === incredibly interesting, wow.

Belief about the plausibility of intelligent design x biology knowledge is a U curve.

very recreational content.

Very very interesting. Thanks for sharing it. Could you provide links to some of reference research papers?

I'm wondering if the ion channel patterning could benefit non-organic solid-state patterning? Like growing a few million bacteria that leave a computational scaffolding when they die.

brilliant

Keep up the speedy divine work colleagues and thank you for the proof of my beliefs and my FAMILY said I was crazy huh you will soon find out that bioelectricity also carries all of our senses and then you will find out where our soul is my predictions.

this is awesome

So, is there a genetic imprint on the bioelectric network, or like as the stimulated leg of the frog, must a bioelectric network be stimulated for something to grow. I think, my question boils down to, what initialises growth into a multicellular organism? A genetic, mechanical pulse, or an electrical (im)pulse? If the answer navigates towards the latter, how did order navigates out of electrical chaos? Like where on the evolutionary timescale does this start?

and, on another note, what should we be feeding all these creatures? do they require all different trace elements? or just some?

bravo

damn that's cool

we are all made up of a zillion different organisms, but when you change the wording and say we are all made up of a zillion different living creatures, including DNA and RNA, etc. as living symbiotic CREATURES, it makes a difference.

Hey this is like a nebula! Each cells are like hydrogen atoms and the atractors are the slight gravity differences that makes stars after a long time. You could then modify where a star would be and what would be it's composition if you control the gravity field, just like they do with camicals! And then DNA would be like the initial explosion of that nebula! Woah guys, we are a bunch of nebulas!

Unapologetic comic sans

What is the limit for regeneration? For example, how much of the worm needs to remain intact before the regeneration will not initiate or complete to spec?

how do the chemical reactions inside the living creatures enable them to decode the genome?

Amazing! Is it possible to scan a brain and fix brain damage with this?

This reminds me of hop fields neutral nets.

Wouldent this be effected by Orgone energy, the energy and magnetism it gives off? Wounder how a TENS unit could work tougheter with orgone

I'm looking forward to planarian computers.

Does anybody have links to more recent talks by Michael Levin or his lab?

Very good! Is there a probability to apply this kind of regeneration to humans in our lifetime until 2050? Especially to make our brain and memories regenerate and live forever?

Is this field of research poised to benefit from quantum computing simulation engines like biochemistry and molecular biology?

The next step is that somatic tissues make decisions about behavior. The body thinks before the brain does.

I'm wondering if it is possible to optimize the human body with this ..like height and stuff

What is missed here is the environmental factors that effect development, and how what a developing life form might be exposed too that activate and deactivate protein expression via DNA. Furthermore in the case of mammals, what possible control the host body housing the developing fetus may have. I would say many environmental factors from air, to food to host health would effect development not just in potentially negative ways, but as a way to further provide diversity. Question? If you took twin embryos and implanted them in two separate unrelated host with different physical environments, would identical twins still be produced?

42:25 -44:06 Might be just me, but this answer right here made me think that we are not too far from putting "consciousness" into other species. By "consciousness" I mean the ability to reason by talking. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Master Splinter might actually happen in a few years.

26:38 Worm: What have you done to me I'm a monster!! Scientists: Don't worry! we'll cut you again and you'll be normal Worm: * stays in two-heads mode* Scientists: uhm...

Exponential head increase, it is like a hydra :^)

Michael

Need to keep a eye on this who knows ray might be right

Can the process described be reversed? Perhaps this is the key to cure tumors/ cancer.

proteins are living creatures too.

isn't that worrying that facebook is connected to such research? Anyways, amazing lecture.

electro-chemical reactions?

Why don't we have the power to regenerate broken and/or missing anatomical structures?

when you think about it a sperm is really a creature, and a ovary egg is also a creature.

So in principle, in every cell division there's a "program" of interactive resonance in a universal heirachical context, and it's all connected to the whole as when explained by Quantum Computing Fields Modulation Mechanism of Time Timing. To see the bio-logical details in actuality is another level of awe.

How much for an extra eye about 10 cm below my umbilical?

Can these 'new' worms survive in there native environment afterwards? If it cannot survive, it is not viable.

So mushrooms make us trip because mushrooms are experiencing a trip themselves. We ingest the compounds and become that fungi for a time.

RNA is memory, it shuffles between DNA and the ribosome. Don't Forget RNA!

Dr. Frankenstein

Does this guy just admitted his team created artificial *living* machines!? This is sheer madness. Wtf with millenial scientists that keep being Lex Luthor or something?

People did not eat till

A fascinating presentation! As someone interested in AI, I wonder if raw data could be made available for a Kaggle competition. This sounds like a useful area to apply PyCharm/Tensorflow?

As i

By rna

23 people have teratoma

How do I use this to improve my gainz?

What makes this creepy is his funders...DARPA (agency of the Dept of Defense) and Paul G. Allen (co microsoft founder and best friends with bill gates). Nothing wicked could come from this could it?

:)

Machinic man who's turned his body into a machine thinks bodies are machines and treats them as machines. NEXT!

why is this about bioelectric? why is this research seemingly ignoring biochemical reactions?

outdated paradigms @aicommission

At around 33 this guy thanks DARPA? DARPA must be way ahead in research regarding this topic. DARPA routinely introduces into academia research concepts and knowledge to be developed to meet current world demands.

Dear Prof. Levin, By not understanding the cause behind the effects in your experiments; I am certain that you will make slow progress toward your goal of regenerating matter. Learning by disturbing nature’s balance and seeing what happens, whilst fascinating and educational; I believe is also a little disturbing and unnecessary! I believe that in order to understand ‘pattern homeostasis’ - you now need to move from complex systems to the methodology at the fundamental level of the elements. The electric wave, particularly in regards to electricity, magnetism and chemistry, must be understood. I think you should continue to follow your instincts, but be careful not to get stuck in one field. Do not just replace ‘neuron theory’ with ‘ion channel’ theory! Space is as important as matter; but most important is Mind which acts as a fulcrum for both. We live in a universe of reproduction. Thank you for this informative talk. L. Dove Arbiter - Advanced Universal Law