Eyewire and Crowdsourced Science
One of the really interesting people I met at TEDMED was Amy Robinson. She’s from MIT and is working on some of the coolest brain technology out there. I’d first seen something similar to their work at CES where they had you control a helicopter with your brain. It’s pretty insane technology. At TEDMED they did a similar thing where you’d control a Xerox cube with your brain.
Amy also taught be about their game to map the brain called EyeWire. It’s been around for ~5 months and already has 60,000 players from 130 countries mapping neurons in 3D to decipher information processing networks in the brain. More simply put, they have 60,000 people playing games to benefit science.
It’s such a beautiful concept. I logged in and started doing some of the mapping. It’s really simple to get started, but I can see how you’re going to have to be pretty creative and detail oriented to be successful at the game. Plus, it’s cool to think that you’re contributing in even a small way to future scientific discovery.
I’ve long loved the idea of crowdsourcing and I’m really glad to see it being applied to science and healthcare. It’s amazing what a crowd of people each contributing a little bit can create.
