The new progress in the brain-like cynomolgus monkey experiment came on Christmas Eve.

It was when everyone was still working on the surface, but in their hearts they were thinking about the festival, that the cynomolgus monkey experiment in the center of "Nimbus" suddenly made a new discovery.

The previous method of connecting electrodes into rigid chips and inserting them into the brains of cynomolgus monkeys with Qi Min's ideas can indeed complete a similar memory transfer function as rats. However, after connecting with the cynomolgus monkey for a long time to cause it to coma, there was a problem when waking the cynomolgus monkey. They found that cynomolgus monkeys, after being connected to the brain-like body and extracting "memories", do not reawaken and lose their "memories" like rats, but cannot be awakened anyway if they do not perform "memory" reinfusion. And when the interval between these two connections is more than two hours, the cynomolgus monkey cannot be woken up even if it is reconnected, but becomes a "plant monkey" from then on.

This made Qi Min realize that the change from rats to cynomolgus monkeys is not a linear increase from simple to complex, and the growth of the number of neurons in the brain to a certain extent will definitely produce qualitative changes. This is a new breakthrough, and if she can't solve the problem of cynomolgus monkeys becoming "plant monkeys" after being connected, the article may also be questioned by others.

So how to solve the problem that cynomolgus monkeys cannot wake up if they are not connected after being connected? Qi Min stood in front of the operating table in the ultra-clean room and thought for more than ten seconds, and soon came to a simple conjecture: if the connection of the callosum interface caused organic changes in the brain of cynomolgus monkeys, could reducing the "dose" be avoided to a certain extent?

This "dose" can be understood as the total number of interfaces, and it can also be understood as the strength of the interface. Qi Min discussed it with Ms. Zhou Xiaoshan, and she felt that since the structure of the interface itself was difficult to replace, it might be possible to reduce the total number of interfaces.

However, Ms. Zhou Xiaoshan said: "I think it may not be the case. You see, if, as you said, an increase in the number of neurons from rats to cynomolgus monkeys causes a qualitative change, then the interface, as the 'channel' that actually collects information, is a reflection of the number of effective neurons that you actually connect to the brain-like body. If you reduce the number of interfaces, the number of effective connections will be reduced, and you may get similar results to rats, but they may not reflect the order of magnitude of cynomolgus monkeys. ”

"This ...... Really. Qi Min couldn't help but ask again, "That can't reduce the quantity, but how can the intensity be reduced?" ”

Ms. Zhou Xiaoshan frowned and thought for a while, and suddenly said: "Now this interface is not strictly controlled by a single neuron, if you regard it as a combination of signals...... If you do a Gaussian transform on the chip, there may not be much difference between the high-resolution and relatively low-resolution signals when received. ”

Since each interface itself does not correspond to the signal of a single neuron, it can be regarded as the sum of multiple neurons, and after the Gaussian transformation of the received signals of all interfaces, the hot spot distribution of neuronal excitation and inhibition can be obtained, and its accuracy can be greater than the accuracy of the interface itself. According to the principle of information theory, if there are an infinite number of interfaces, but the resolution of the interfaces themselves is reduced due to noise interference with each other, the distribution of hot spots after the same Gaussian transform should ideally be exactly the same as before, and exactly equal to the real distribution of neuronal activity - if the encoding is lossless, the information itself will not be affected.

Of course, since the number of interfaces they use cannot be infinite, the distribution of hotspots that result from the Gaussian variation – which happens to be equivalent to the information coming out of the brain – will certainly be slightly different from the previous ones, but it is also essentially a lossy compressed outgoing brain signal, which should be the same as before.

Qi Min understood: "Do you think you can do non-insertion electrodes?" ”

"I'm afraid it won't work if it's not inserted." Ms. Zhou Xiaoshan said, "On the premise of ensuring signal reception, you also have to ensure signal transmission – maybe you can try subcutaneous electrodes that are not inserted into the skull." ”

The idea is simple and relatively easy to implement. It's just that this experiment is still a bit expensive - for this new batch of cynomolgus monkeys, which is not cheap.

——

But it's worth the money.

After Qi Min and the technicians worked overnight to modify the callosum interface chip until December 26, and conducted three consecutive days of experiments, the cynomolgus monkey experiment with weakened interface strength finally succeeded - albeit in part.

With the weakened interface, cynomolgus monkeys will not fall asleep after a long period of connection, but they will no longer fall into a coma. Moreover, when they disconnected and went for a memory test, these cynomolgus monkeys also remembered exactly what they had learned before, unlike the rats who performed a water maze after a long connection seemed to "forget" their previous memories.

It can be assumed that the brain-like body does not seem to be able to extract the memories of cynomolgus monkeys by weakening the intensity of the interface. However, the pattern of data changes in the brain-like body does have some similarities with the previous connections with high-strength interfaces.

Qi Min thinks that this may not be a problem with the inappropriate strength of the interface. A log of the code that runs the partition to clear the data in the brain-like body shows that the traces of data generated in the brain-like body when using a low-intensity interface to connect to the cynomolgus monkey brain are similar to the traces produced in a short period of time when using a high-intensity interface. However, in some cases, when the data was not cleared in time, after a delay of several hours, the traces produced in the brain-like body by using a high-strength interface to connect to the cynomolgus monkey brain will spontaneously "spread", and even cause the data in all regions of the brain-like body to fluctuate.

It feels strange. It's like ...... The cynomolgus monkey is "alive" in the brain-like body.

It occurred to her that if it was assumed that the brain-like body extracted not the "working memory" of the cynomolgus monkey, but "consciousness", then everything could be explained.

If cynomolgus monkeys really have the so-called "consciousness" - such a complex primate should probably be considered to have it, right? The long-term connection of the high-strength interface introduces the consciousness of the cynomolgus monkey into the brain-like body, so if it is not transmitted back in a short time, the body of the cynomolgus monkey will not be able to spontaneously generate new consciousness, thus becoming a "plant monkey". However, the low-intensity interface may not be able to fully channel consciousness into the brain-like body, so only some traces are produced when the consciousness is connected to the brain-like body, which naturally does not lead to the cynomolgus monkey coma.

So if this fanciful assumption still has some truth, how can we explain that the cynomolgus monkey's consciousness cannot be transmitted back after more than two hours? The problem probably does not lie in the cynomolgus monkey's body, but may be due to the fact that consciousness has changed in the brain-like body, which is different from the brain, and can no longer be adapted to the theatrical brain. Perhaps it's like plasticine that was originally filled with some kind of pipe is pulled out of the pipe, spread out and adhered in an unconstrained environment, and it is difficult to stuff it back into the pipe.

This is an ambitious conjecture, but the question is how to prove it?