Crowd sourcing Inspiration: Scientists Create Video Game to Map the Brain
There has been a lot of posts and discussion about the power of crowd sourcing recently. Due to the new marketing push and idea production methodology, Steemians are posting great ideas for crowd sourcing projects.
I wanted to write this post to highlight one example of the power of crowd sourcing and how it can change the world!
EyeWire
"When Sebastian Seung read that each day people around the world spend 600 years collectively playing Angry Birds, he saw not a huge waste, but a big opportunity."
This is the story of Sebastian Seung and his amazing crowd sourcing effort to change the medical world!
"Seung, a professor of computational neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thought that if he could divert even a fraction of that attention to a game with a loftier goal, he could help create the “connectome” — a map of the vast number of connections in the brain that underlie vision, memory, and disease."
"“We believe the connectome is such a difficult challenge that neuroscientists alone can’t do it,” said Seung, whose lab is developing the combination of artificial intelligence and citizen science that could rapidly map a cubic millimeter of brain."
"But, he said, “if we were 1 percent as fun [as Angry Birds], we could do this in a year.”
Seung and his team designed and launched EyeWire (eyewire.org)
"Eyewire is a game to map the brain in collaboration with the Seung Lab at Princeton. Anyone can play and you need no scientific background — over 200,000 people from 145 countries already do. Together we are mapping the 3D structure of neurons; advancing our quest to understand ourselves."
"Turns out, citizen scientists are very good helpers. Humans are more adept at spotting the patterns of neuron connectors than most machines are, which is why every player’s moves are recorded and fed to artificial intelligence to help machines get better at this very task. Since EyeWire’s public launch in December, more than 70,000 people have played the game. In total, they’ve colored in more than a million 3-D neuron cubes (each cube represents a tiny chunk of brain), resulting in the mapping of 26 whole cells."
Players try to figure out how tangled sets of neurons connect to each other.
Image: EyeWire
By crowd sourcing the research they are able to drastically reduce research time. The next mission for the group is to increase the amount of players thus super charging their effort to map the brain.
JIM DAVIS/GLOBE STAFF
Sebastian Seung of MIT is helping to create a map of the brain’s neural connections.
There are already a variety of other science projects taking advantage of this model,
"Foldit, a game developed by the Center for Game Science at Washington University that asks players to help solve the mysteries of protein folding, is a brilliant way to use gameplay to tackle a scientific question"
The internet provides new ways for developers and researchers to harness the collective power of humanity. We live in incredibly exciting times with technology that is rapidly changing the world.
So...let us, as Steemians take inspiration from those before us, and do our part to make the world a better place by working together.
If you want to help map the brain, go give their game a try!
If you want to learn more I encourage you to check out the original articles in their entirety using the sources below. There is a lot more information out there regarding this topic if it interests you.
Sources
https://www.wired.com/2013/08/a-video-game-that-lets-you-be-a-neuroscientist/
AUTHOR: LIZ STINSON. LIZ STINSON DESIGN DATE OF PUBLICATION: 08.02.13.
08.02.13
TIME OF PUBLICATION: 12:15 PM.
By Carolyn Y. Johnson GLOBE STAFF JULY 16, 2012
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuUUnT6oDeKwE6v1NGQxug
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Quite interesting. There is a similar platform called zooniverse which has a varierty of similar games.
I just checked that out. Very interesting! Thanks for the tip!
Wow that's a really neat idea. I know that a while back there was an online game with animo acids and people just messed around and every once in a while, it would fold into a new protein chain. These sort of gamified research experiments show promise and I wonder what the next big crows sourced scientific research is going to be? Anyone know of anything good coming down the pipe?
Yeah, it is a brilliant concept, will be interesting to see other ways it will be implemented!
One of the most fascinating articles yet. Upvoted!
Thank you @stonedfood!
This is absolutely fascinating. Thanks so much for sharing this! Here's a post I wrote on game-ifying the design process, you might be interested. Anyway, great article @digicrypt
Thanks! I checked your article out, another really interesting application of this concept!