Brain Uploading... Is It Possible?

(I apologise for the shabby layout, it's been a while)

You're on a great rockclimbing expadition, you're climbing one of the tallest mountains in Britain, let's say Scotland, Ben Nevis. You don't need rope, rope needs you, you're great at climbing, and you experience climbing withhout safty gear as a thrill, part of a challange. Suddenly, your palms get slippery. "Oh no!", you think, as you slide off. Ouch, a hundred foot drop, you're not going to make this. You close your eyes and your life flashes before you. ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDD..........................


You wake up, you're in a lab. Was it a dream? You look down and to your shock, you see that your arms have now been replaced by robotic objects! You look in a mirror to find yourself staring at a bulky robot. "WHAT!?" you say to yourself. "How could this be? I'm a robot, yet I can still remember all my memories, I have all my mannorisms, I am [insert name here], how can this possibly be?"*

The good news, is that you're a mind upload, a copy of your cognitive functions, a map of all your neurons mapped onto a piece of software. As insurance in case something bad happening with your rock climbing, you decided to get your mind mapped, so you could live on if something bad happened.

"Surly this is science fiction?" you might say. Not as much as you'd think. Mind-mapping is becomeing very talked about, and it's just the sci-fi fans who are talking about this marvel Nick Bostrom of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford (sounds kinda flashy, doesn't it?) has taken serious consideration with this. But Joe, I hear you say, surly the brain is a unique thing that cannot be translated into a mere computer program... I'm gonna take an attempt to show how it may be possible to have a concious emulation of a brain on a chip. Here goes:

Joe's wonderful argument for mind-mapping/emulation

Right, here's a nice little picture of a brain:



Hey brain! Anyway, on the left we have a closeup of the brain, durr. The nodes there are the neurons, and the links between them are the synapses. Information is transferered through communication of the neurons and synapses. Now, can we do something similar on a chip? Well, in topology, provinding the links are in the right place, nodes can be structured in any way you want, so on the picture of the right, we have our little silicon brain. It may look different, but if the BUS (the equivilant of synappses in computing, they allow power, and information to be transfered) structure of the system links all the silicon nodes (representing the neurons) in the exact same way as the brain, and the information and power is transfered at the same rate as the synapses in the brain, then we should have a system, that computes, and therefore behaves like a brain. It should even display conciousness. Cool huh? Well, I'm a uni dropout so this is an amateur attempt to explain mind mapping, but I'll be looking at the papers to see if my theory has any resembelance.



Here is a paper on Mind-Uploading http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/3853/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdfnot


*I doubt given the circumstances you'd be as articulate as this, but oh well.