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

The Artificial Intelligence Channel

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  • Recommended by 12 people, in Hacker News, across 11 different months.
  • Presented by Michael Levin, as the video describes them

Assumes interest and some biology. Education, not medical advice.

102K views7 years ago12 recommendations

How the body worksBrain and nervesPhysiologyCells and molecules

Michael Levin explains how non-neural bioelectric networks coordinate cell behavior and control anatomical development and regeneration.

Presented December 4th 2018 by Prof. Michael Levin (Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University) Michael Levin Vannevar Bush Professor Director, Allen Discovery Center at Tufts Director, Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology Morphological and behavioral information processing in living systems

Why it's here

12 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended by viewers as a mind-blowing introduction to bioelectricity and its potential to revolutionize regenerative medicine.

leesecin Hacker News • Recommends

On “On Having No Head: Cognition Throughout Biological Systems (2016)”

Was recently floored by Michael Levin's (one of this papers authors) talk at NIPS. Possibly the most amazing talk I have ever seen. link to this video
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gt5050in Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Best talks of 2018?”

What bodies think about - by Michael Levin at NeurIPS 2018. link to this video I dont really know anything about biology, but this piqued my interest.One of the most interesting talks of 2018.
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aeleosin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Best talks of 2018?”

Recent but great talk posted here, What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System 1 by Prof. Michael Levin. He talks about how long term low energy electrical networks between all cells in living organisms shape how the organism grows. I think what he talks about will be the future of medicine as it allows for an amazing degree of high level control over how animals grow. 1. link to this video
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navinsylvesterin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What tech talk does everyone need to see?”

What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System talk by Prof. Michael Levin - link to this video
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tyscorpin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Technology Will Soon Give Us Precise Control Over Our Brains and Genes?”

There is a talk 1 I saw about programming our bodies at a higher level than genes. Analogous to editing HDL over physically altering an ASIC. 1 link to this video
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subyin Hacker News • Recommends

On “The second decade of synthetic biology: 2010–2020”

…a programmer, to me it sounds like the genome is the actual implementation of a function and the bioelectrical pattern is the sequence of functions you want to execute. They're able to manipulate these bioelectrical patterns to do things like replace a worms tail with another head. It's absolutely crazy to think about what could be possible here. link to this video…
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tent3n3in Hacker News • Recommends

On “Antioxidants prevent health-promoting effects of physical exercise (2009) [pdf]”

I feel like there’s some underlying relationship here with Godel and infinitely large numbers. We cannot know all states of all particles that ever were or will be, how can we ever concretely analyze human existence when space-time is so infinite? Michael Levin and team show us that manipulation of electric fields in animals ...well see for yourself: link to this video All that physical structure we nurture as concrete truth? Not so sure about that.
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flobosgin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Frog skin cells turned themselves into living machines”

Speaking of Michael Levin, I find this lecture of his fascinating: What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - link to this video
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k2enemyin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Persuading the Body to Regenerate Its Limbs”

I highly recommend this video from Levin. It was my introduction to his work. What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018 link to this video
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7373737373in Hacker News • Recommends

On “Mike Levin on using bioelectricity to study how cells form (2019)”

This talk of his blew my mind: "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018" link to this video
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7373737373in Hacker News • Recommends

On “Fish eyes grown in a petri dish from embryonic stem cells”

I highly recommend this talk "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018" by Prof. Michael Levin: link to this video
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Wherecombinatorin Hacker News • Recommends

First saw this talk from Michael Levin on HN a few years back and it blew my mind. Ive been following him ever since. link to this video
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jstriebin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Classical sorting algorithms as a model of morphogenesis (2023)”

The last coauthor listed on this preprint is Michael Levin, who has a lot of other cool work. In particular, this talk of his from NeurIPS 2018 includes fascinating biology research results, as well as musings on the future of biologically-inspired artificial intelligence. link to this video HN discussion about the talk: link
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talkingtabin Hacker News • Mentions

On “On Having No Head: Cognition Throughout Biological Systems (2016)”

If a "debate" is a kind of AI/neural network activity this makes sense. The smaller groups could correspond to layers, and one would expect that the level of interchange would be higher in groups of small groups compared to single large group. In this model, a debate is "thinking" where the participants act as neurons. A recent thread on HN ( link ) linked to a video link to this video about ion channels providing similar functionality to neurons, so maybe we humans can create "brains" as well.
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sinkpointin Hacker News • Mentions

On “Woman Grows a Nose on Her Spine After Stem Cell Experiment”

Short answer is no one knows, but there's tantalising evidence that it has to do with macro extracellular electric gradient in tissue: link to this video
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carapacein Hacker News • Mentions

On “The importance of decentralisation”

…function is a single "point" of failure for the whole. (E.g., a relatively small wound can cause death by exsanguination.) On the other hand, consider the radical indignities that the lowly planarian will endure only to placidly regrow a tail or a head or whatever. (See "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" link to this video link Which, incidentally, adds a whole layer of complexity and nuance to the concept of intelligent design , since the whole of Nature has now been scientifically shown to think ...) It remains to be seen whether Humans + Internet = Self-Organization or along what lines. (What's the news out of Hong Kong this week? Are the distributed, se…
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