Your introduction describes how I feel about my area of expertise too!
Working in the field of *neuroscience* is a bizarre experience. No one seems to be interested in the most interesting applications of their research. Neuroscience has significantly advanced in the past few decades. I keep telling people that soon we’re all going to have self driving cars powerd by a horse’s brain in a glass jar. Most people just laugh in disbelief, others make frightened noises and mention “ethical issues” or change the subject. The smart money is off chasing the deep learning pipe dream, and as a direct consequence, there is low-hanging fruit absolutely everywhere.
Sorry to get your hopes up but I was being facetious and provocative. Instead of a glass jar, our horse’s brain is going to live inside of a computer simulation. Nonetheless, I think my argument still holds true.
Neuroscientists scoff at the thought of whole brain simulation. They’re incredulous and as a result they’re unambitious. They want it but they know they can’t have it; they’ve got sour grapes. Despite these bad vibes, they have been working diligently and I think we’re not too far off from making simulations which are genuinely useful.
On a wacky side note, IMO, if we did have a horses brain in a jar, then interacting with it would be the easy part. There have been some really neat advances in how we interact with brains.
We can make neurons light up when they activate, see GCaMP
And here is a video of GCaMP in action:
We can activate synapses with light, see Optogenetics
The hard part would be keeping it alive for its 25-30 year lifespan even though it’s missing important internal organs like the heart, lungs, liver, and adaptive immune system.