What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN regularly calls it mind-blowing and recommends it as an introduction to Levin's work on bioelectricity and regeneration.
What it is
Michael Levin's NeurIPS 2018 talk on bioelectric computation outside the nervous system, showing how cell electrical networks shape development and regeneration. It covers morphological information processing in living tissue.
Recommended by 12 HN commenters across 11 different months, 2018 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec leesec · 2018-12 · on “On Having No Head: Cognition Throughout Biological Systems (2016)”
Was recently floored by Michael Levin's (one of this papers authors) talk at NIPS. Possibly the most amazing talk I have ever seen. [this video]
Strong rec gt5050 · 2018-12 · on “Ask HN: Best talks of 2018?”
What bodies think about - by Michael Levin at NeurIPS 2018. [this video] I dont really know anything about biology, but this piqued my interest.One of the most interesting talks of 2018.
Strong rec aeleos · 2018-12 · on “Ask HN: Best talks of 2018?”
Recent but great talk posted here, What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System [1] by Prof. Michael Levin. He talks about how long term low energy electrical networks between all cells in living organisms shape how the organism grows. I think what he talks about will be the future of medicine as it allows for an amazing degree of high level control over how animals grow. 1. [this video]
Strong rec suby · 2020-10 · on “The second decade of synthetic biology: 2010–2020”
I'm very excited to see where we'll be in another 10 years. The possibilities in terms of medical and industrial applications seems hard to overstate. Related, but one of the best talks I've ever seen was this 2018 talk on the subject. It gets into how organisms seem to have bioelectrical patterns that store information separately from genomic, anatomical states. These bioelectrical patterns play a huge role in developmental processes, as they appear to control how the organism is structured at a high level. As a layman and a programmer, to me it sounds like the genome is the actual implementation of a function and the bioelectrical pattern is the sequence of functions you want to execute. T
Strong rec k2enemy · 2021-05 · on “Persuading the Body to Regenerate Its Limbs”
I highly recommend this video from Levin. It was my introduction to his work. What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018 [this video]
Strong rec 7373737373 · 2021-07 · on “Mike Levin on using bioelectricity to study how cells form (2019)”
This talk of his blew my mind: "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018" [this video]
Strong rec 7373737373 · 2021-09 · on “Fish eyes grown in a petri dish from embryonic stem cells”
I highly recommend this talk "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018" by Prof. Michael Levin: [this video]
Strong rec Wherecombinator · 2023-10 · on “”
First saw this talk from Michael Levin on HN a few years back and it blew my mind. Ive been following him ever since. [this video]