[HN Gopher] High-speed microscope captures fleeting brain signals
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       High-speed microscope captures fleeting brain signals
        
       Author : prostoalex
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2020-03-28 17:12 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.sciencedaily.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedaily.com)
        
       | p1esk wrote:
       | _3,000 times per second. That 's fast enough to trace electrical
       | signals flowing through brain circuits._
       | 
       | It's incredible how much slower brain signals are than what we
       | are used to dealing with in modern electronics. To debug a CPU in
       | my laptop I'd need a scope with multi-GHz sampling rates.
        
         | trhway wrote:
         | Power consumption grows with the square of frequency. Brain
         | working frequency is just like 200Hz. 100T of synapses (or
         | sizeable share of it) at that frequency puts us into hundreds
         | tera-ops/second of calculation power - all at just 20watt of
         | electrical power. To get evolutionary smarter though we
         | possibly would have to devote bigger share of our body 100watt
         | energy budget or find a way to produce more energy.
        
           | leshokunin wrote:
           | That's really insightful, thanks. Somehow made me think of
           | AMD's "let's add more cores" strategy, but it makes sense!
        
           | p1esk wrote:
           | Can't compare those teraops directly: my laptop's CPU is a
           | lot more precise than my brain.
        
       | ykevinator wrote:
       | https://youtube.com/watch?v=lhkK6jURljs
        
         | jcims wrote:
         | Needs some explanatory voiceover. Reminds me of slow motion
         | lightning strikes strikes after the leader connects.
        
       | wjn0 wrote:
       | So cool. In my opinion, so many of the open problems in biology
       | can be approached from the direction of specificity - from
       | specificity in measurement to specificity in targeting
       | interventions. For example, tools like this for elucidating
       | cognition; alternatively, cancer (identifying and targeting
       | problematic cells).
        
       | stilley2 wrote:
       | Full article https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/543058v2
        
         | ngold wrote:
         | >Abstract
         | 
         | >Understanding information processing in the brain requires us
         | to monitor neural activity in vivo at high spatiotemporal
         | resolution. Using an ultrafast two-photon fluorescence
         | microscope (2PFM) empowered by all-optical laser scanning, we
         | imaged neural activity in vivo at up to 3,000 frames per second
         | and submicron spatial resolution. This ultrafast imaging method
         | enabled monitoring of both supra- and sub-threshold electrical
         | activity down to 345 mm below the brain surface in head fixed
         | awake mice.>
        
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       (page generated 2020-03-29 23:00 UTC)