How do brain wrinkles affect the transmission of nerve activity? A challenge using nonlinear physics
Reached the funding target!
To those who supported and spread
Thanks to everyone's help, I was able to achieve the target amount of 300,000 yen faster than expected (7 days after release)!! In addition, I received many very helpful messages from all of you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have not replied to some of them, but I will reply to you later. By replying one by one, I realize that many people are supporting me! I would like to thank you and do my best to live up to your expectations!
The money will be used to participate in the summer school to be held at the Santa Fe Institute in June 2019 as scheduled.
However, the participation fee for the summer school is 500,000 yen, and in addition, the round trip travel fee is 100,000 yen, so I have not yet raised enough funds. Therefore, for the remaining challenge period, I have set a second goal of 600,000 yen, which is the sum of the insufficient participation fee and travel expenses, and continue to ask for support. I look forward to working with you until the end of the challenge!!
Comment from academist staff
Want to learn at Mecca "Santa Fe Institute" of complex science!
naomi tanaka
Get to the mystery of the shape of living things
I spent my childhood as a biologist who was absorbed in collecting insects and playing on the beach, and I wanted to learn more about the fun of living things, so I went on to the Department of Biological Sciences in the Faculty of Science. In the class, I learned about molecular biology, which mainly deals with small biomolecules such as DNA and protein, and learned that organisms, including ourselves, are made up of such biomolecules because they are elaborately made.
On the other hand, I began to feel that the shapes and behaviors of the real creatures I was fascinated by when I was a child and the world these biomolecules describe were very far away. In the first semester of the doctoral course, the Department of Human Informatics conducted research on the behavior of living organisms, using methods of psychology, virtual reality, and neural networks to measure human behavior and develop mathematical models. I learned the fun and difficulty of modeling human behavior, but at the same time I realized that my interest was not in human behavior but in the form of living things. Why do ants, fish, and pigeons around us take this shape and why do they do this? And how do we create life with similar functions? It turned out to be my interest to solve this simple question.
Therefore, from the second semester of my doctoral program, I returned to the Graduate School of Science to study the shapes of living things and how they were realized. In particular, I am now focusing on the formation of the brain and trying to understand its basic principles.
Does the shape of the brain affect the activity of nerve cells?
There are many wrinkles in the adult brain, but in the embryonic brain soon after fertilization, there are no wrinkles and the number of wrinkles increases as human growth. Because the location of the initial few wrinkles in the embryo's brain is thought to determine the location of subsequent wrinkles, elucidating this positioning mechanism is important for understanding brain shaping.
Brain wrinkles form mainly as cells grow. In recent years, experimental results showing a correlation between the amount of nerve cell activity on the surface of the brain and the rate of cell proliferation have revealed that nerve cell activity (electrical signal) can be involved in the formation of wrinkles. Other studies have suggested that the location of the brain where this signal occurs frequently depends on the shape of the brain's surface. Therefore, I hypothesize that the shape of the brain surface determines the activity of nerve cells, that is, the propagation path of electrical signals. I conduct computer simulations in various shapes to investigate the propagation path.
Specifically, I investigate how a traveling wave that mimics an electrical signal of neural activity travels on a curved surface obtained from measurement data of a real human brain surface by using a reaction-diffusion equation, which is a method of nonlinear physics. So far, it has been found that waves follow the shape of curved surfaces and change their direction of travel. In addition, geometric analysis has revealed that the change in direction of travel due to this curved surface can be predicted only from the shape of the curved surface. This is a direct connection between the shape of the curved surface and the propagation path of the wave.
In the future, I would like to apply this theory of shaping by the interaction between the surface shape and the direction of wave propagation, which is related to the growth of the surface shape, to the shape of organisms other than the brain, as well as to artificial life in which the shape is changed spontaneously just like an organism.
I want to learn nonlinear physics in Mecca "Santa Fe Institute" of complex system science.
The ultimate goal of my research is to elucidate the principles of shaping organisms and to design artificial life using those principles. I have come to feel that I need to learn more about nonlinear physics methods in order to advance my research toward that goal. Therefore, I decided to apply for the summer school to be held from June to July 2019 at the Santa Fe Institute, which is the mecca of complex science including nonlinear physics and is my dream research institute.
The Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984 to advance complex science in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. It was at this Santa Fe Institute that the discipline I am now interested in called "artificial life" was born.
In the Santa Fe Institute's summer school, about 70% of group work projects in the past 30 times have developed into collaborative research, and about 30% have resulted in the publication of papers. This figure is much higher than that of other summer schools, indicating that students can continue to interact with outstanding researchers overseas even after summer school. The lectures cover a wide range of topics, including nonlinear physics, game theory, learning theory, stochastic process, network science, computer science, artificial intelligence, and information theory. There are no other opportunities for these experts to give lectures at one time other than in the summer school at the Santa Fe Institute. By studying a wide range of fields intensively in a short period of time, students can gain a panoramic view of complex system science and develop more accurate guidelines for their research.
Request for research fund support
When I applied to the summer school of the Santa Fe Institute, which I admired, I was able to pass the highly competitive selection process in which outstanding doctoral students and young researchers from around the world participate, and I was able to get permission to participate. But the participation fee is expensive and it is not paid.
I applied for a scholarship offered by my graduate school or a scholarship offered by a private company, but I couldn't get any results. I was told that the participation fee of the summer school is not covered by the support, so I was sometimes asked to pay in advance. However, my desire to visit the Santa Fe Institute, which I adore, is increasing day by day, and I decided to try crowdfunding this time. The research funds you support will be used for summer school participation and travel expenses.
This summer school participation is an important part of my big project to answer the question "Why do organisms look like this, and why do they behave like this? Can we create artificial life just like life?". I believe this is an opportunity to expand my knowledge in a short period of time. I look forward to your support.
Profile
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This activity will be actively published on Twitter and Facebook.
This summer school participation is an important part of my big project to answer the question "Why do organisms look like this, and why do they behave like this? Can we create artificial life just like life?". I believe this is an opportunity to expand my knowledge in a short period of time. I look forward to your support.
Project timeline
| Date | Plans |
|---|---|
| April 2019 | Crowdfunding Challenge |
| June 2019 | Participated in summer school |
| July 2019 | Returned to Japan, Science Cafe (Schedule) |
| September 2019 | Studied abroad at the University of Vermont (Schedule) |
| April 2020 | Returned to Japan (Schedule) |
| June 2020 | Report on results at ALIFE 2020 Montreal (Schedule) |
Pledge Rewards
I will send you original images of the Santa Fe Institute and its activities on the site. In addition to the long history and culture of Native Americans, the downtown has a unique blend of Spanish and Mexican culture, which began in the early 17 s. I would like to send you a great picture!
Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
4 supporters are supporting with this reward. （No quantity limit）
I will send you a report about the Santa Fe Institute and summer school activities. Thank you for your support!
Summer School Participation Report (PDF) / Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
5 supporters are supporting with this reward. （No quantity limit）
I invite you to the Science Cafe. It will be held on July 13, 2019 in Osaka. On that day, I will talk about the contents of the summer school and the research I am working on, so I look forward to your participation! (* If you cannot participate on the day, I will share the materials at a later date. Also, please bear the cost of transportation to the venue.)
(Plan A) Science Cafe participation right (Sorry only in Japan) / Summer School Participation Report (PDF) / Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
2 supporters are supporting with this reward. （No quantity limit）
I will write a technical book in Japanese* based on the lecture notes I took at summer school and send it to you. The contents will be understandable if you have undergraduate mathematics (calculus, linear algebra, probability). If you read this, you will be able to know what you are actually teaching at summer school. You are also invited to "online community for complex science and artificial life" on Slack, a business chat. I would like to create a place with you where we can share interesting articles from casual conversations, and where we can grow seeds that could develop into collaborative research and products. We look forward to hearing from you who are interested in complex science and technology related to artificial life, as well as from your core fans who are smoldering without anyone to discuss!
*If you have a request, I will write a technical book in English.
(Plan B) Invitation tickets for the technical booklet which are based on the contents of the lectures given at the summer school (PDF) and "online community for complex science and artificial life" / Summer School Participation Report (PDF) / Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
14 supporters are supporting with this reward. （No quantity limit）
When I make a conference presentation on this research, I will post your name as an acknowledgment and send you the presentation materials of the day (electron). Also, I will post your name in the acknowledgement of your thesis and send you a PDF of your thesis when I publish it in the journal. * I will make every effort to compile the research results, but please be aware that there is a possibility that I may not be able to publish the paper.
Acknowledgments of papers and papers presented at academic conferences / (Plan B) Invitation tickets for the technical booklet which are based on the contents of the lectures given at the summer school (PDF) and "online community for complex science and artificial life" / (Plan A) Science Cafe participation right (Sorry only in Japan) / Summer School Participation Report (PDF) / Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
7 supporters are supporting with this reward. （No quantity limit）
With this summer school as a springboard, I plan to create a booklet that provides an overview of the entire field of artificial life from the current perspective. There are several textbooks published during the boom period (1980s), but materials describing current research trends from the boom period have not yet been realized in Japanese. However, it is hard to write the whole field alone. I want to write a booklet about artificial life with you! If you do not wish to be a co-author, I will include your name in the booklet we produced.
Right to co-write a booklet on modern artificial life / Acknowledgments of papers and papers presented at academic conferences / (Plan B) Invitation tickets for the technical booklet which are based on the contents of the lectures given at the summer school (PDF) and "online community for complex science and artificial life" / (Plan A) Science Cafe participation right (Sorry only in Japan) / Summer School Participation Report (PDF) / Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
0 supporters are supporting with this reward. （No quantity limit）
The source code for simulating the traveling wave is shared on a curved surface simulating the brain surface, and the source code is explained in a video conference, etc. In addition to explaining the source code, I also support free discussions.
Sharing and interpretation of source code for simulating traveling waves on curved surfaces (Free discussion is also available.) / Right to co-write a booklet on modern artificial life / Acknowledgments of papers and papers presented at academic conferences / (Plan B) Invitation tickets for the technical booklet which are based on the contents of the lectures given at the summer school (PDF) and "online community for complex science and artificial life" / (Plan A) Science Cafe participation right (Sorry only in Japan) / Summer School Participation Report (PDF) / Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
4 supporters are supporting with this reward. （No quantity limit）
This is the right to publish a report on the state of the Santa Fe Institute's summer school. I will discuss the details of the article and the publication schedule individually.
Right to publish report articles / Sharing and interpretation of source code for simulating traveling waves on curved surfaces (Free discussion is also available.) / Right to co-write a booklet on modern artificial life / Acknowledgments of papers and papers presented at academic conferences / (Plan B) Invitation tickets for the technical booklet which are based on the contents of the lectures given at the summer school (PDF) and "online community for complex science and artificial life" / (Plan A) Science Cafe participation right (Sorry only in Japan) / Summer School Participation Report (PDF) / Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
0 supporters are supporting with this reward. （No quantity limit）
After returning to Japan, I will give a lecture at a designated place about our experiences at summer school. Details and schedule of the lecture will be decided by individual consultation. * Please note that travel and accommodation expenses will be charged separately if you are far away.
Right to take the stage at the event / Right to publish report articles / Sharing and interpretation of source code for simulating traveling waves on curved surfaces (Free discussion is also available.) / Right to co-write a booklet on modern artificial life / Acknowledgments of papers and papers presented at academic conferences / (Plan B) Invitation tickets for the technical booklet which are based on the contents of the lectures given at the summer school (PDF) and "online community for complex science and artificial life" / (Plan A) Science Cafe participation right (Sorry only in Japan) / Summer School Participation Report (PDF) / Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
0 supporters are supporting with this reward. （No quantity limit）
SSL encryption communication is used in this Web site, and the informations filled out are safely transmitted.
Original images taken locally (10 sheets)
4
supporters
back
（No quantity limit）
Summer School Participation Report (PDF) and others
5
supporters
back
（No quantity limit）
(Plan A) Science Cafe participation right (Sorry only in Japan) and others
2
supporters
back
（No quantity limit）
(Plan B) Invitation tickets for the technical booklet which are based on the contents of the lectures given at the summer school (PDF) and "online community for complex science and artificial life" and others
14
supporters
back
（No quantity limit）
Acknowledgments of papers and papers presented at academic conferences and others
7
supporters
back
（No quantity limit）
Right to co-write a booklet on modern artificial life and others
0
supporters
back
（No quantity limit）
Sharing and interpretation of source code for simulating traveling waves on curved surfaces (Free discussion is also available.) and others
4
supporters
back
（No quantity limit）
Right to publish report articles and others
0
supporters
back
（No quantity limit）
Right to take the stage at the event and others
0
supporters
back
（No quantity limit）
academist Prize 3rd adopted
