Andrew Robie - Neuroplastic lyrics

Chad had no idea what he was doing. He had been hunched over the circuit board for about five hours. He held the tracer like a pencil—Dr. Henderson seemed to prefer holding it like a razor, but Chad had never gotten comfortable working like that. He was just glad etching was so easy. His dad had worked on stuff like this a long time ago, and back then, when they had to get the boards perfect or start all over didn't sound like fun, not to mention all the transistors and other components. Now with a few taps and lines drawn with the tracer, he could make a working circuit board. In theory. And if he messed up, he could run it through the school's nullifier and start from scratch, something he'd become far more familiar with than he'd ever wanted over the past six months. “Why?” he moaned. “Why did I decide to do this?” It didn't seem that hard when he'd proposed the idea to Dr. Henderson. The doctor's reaction should have given him a clue otherwise. But how hard could it be? All he had to do was make a circuit board that could adjust its topology based on user inputs to learn basic addition and subtraction. Heck, people had figured out a long time ago how to get computers to add and subtract. They just had to give them all the rules beforehand. But now he had less than a week to present something or his funding would be cut off. Chad dropped the tracer on the lab bench and leaned back. The room, save for his desk lamp, was dark. His cla** shirt, a simple white bu*ton-up, was draped across the back of the chair. Chad had taken it off, leaving just his undershirt, after about the first hour. “This suuucks.” He stretched his legs and heard his knees pop. Well that's fun, he thought. He let his head flop forward, chin resting on his chest, and looked at the board. It was a small thing, only about five by eight inches. He chuckled. “Why did I think I could do in a few months what it took nature billions of years to do through guess and check?” He looked up at the dark ceiling. “Get a computer to learn how to add,” he said sarcastically. “It'll be easy. I'll have it done in three months.” He let out a groan. Naively optimistic was an understatement, though naive was certainly appropriate. Chad stood and picked up the tracer and circuit board. He flipped the wall switch above the bench and the overhead lights flickered on, causing him to blink while his eyes adjusted. He walked over and replaced them on the equipment shelf. Quickly picking up the circuit board again, he held it up and inspected it closely. “Whew,” he said. He'd forgotten if it was back to base or if he'd left any stray paths on there. It wasn't much of an issue. The rest of the graduate students knew to check, but lab procedure was that all boards should be wiped when being replaced on the shelf. Otherwise, whoever was working on them had to file the changes made and set the board in the working section. It wasn't a lot, but Chad hadn't gotten anywhere and at this point, he just wanted to be done for the night. He grabbed his shirt off the chair and put it on, not bothering to bu*ton it. When he stepped out of the lab, the hall lights were off. He looked at his watch. “No,” he mumbled. His watch read 1:27. The lights didn't usually shut off until 2, when the labs closed for the night. Must have been the janitor. Fortunately, the campus lights were bright enough through the windows that he could see where he was going. As he walked, Chad kicked his feet along the faux-marble floor. His soles squeaked as he did. It sounded like brakes in desperate need of fixing. The thought made him laugh. When he got to the door, he stopped and leaned his head against the upper gla** pane and looked across the quad at the Library. His apartment was just behind it, across the street. Wasn't a long walk, but Chad would rather not have had to make it. He considered sleeping in the lab, but decided against it, and, leaning his hips into the push-handle, opened the door. As he stepped outside, a gust of wind hit and made him shiver. “Shoulda brought a jacket,” he mumbled, rolling down his sleeves and bu*toning his shirt. He shoved his hands in his pockets, shivered again, and started across the gra**. When he got to the library, he stopped. Looking up the steps, he saw its big, real marble columns. Could you be any more clichéd, he thought. He started around the building but stopped and looked back again. Chad started up the steps. He wasn't exactly tired, but he'd wanted to get out of the lab. Maybe he could find something that might help in there. Chad settled into a cushy reclining chair towards the back of the library. He wasn't sure what he hoped to find, but had grabbed a few books on how brains work. These were books he'd started before, but after about half an hour, the words would start to blur together and he'd find himself looking for a distraction. “Maybe tonight'll go better,” mumbled Chad, opening the first book. It didn't. After two pages, he'd started staring blankly at one of the pictures. He wasn't even sure what it was, but it wasn't words. He decided to set the book aside and try to puzzle it out. Chad leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands. “Brains form connections based on simultaneous activity,” he said to himself. He had no idea if that was true, but he'd heard it somewhere and it seemed to make sense. “Now how do they make the connections?” Well, he thought, it's not exactly stable in there—I think? But it is self-contained. So simultaneous neural activity builds a connection, and the more you learn, the more those connections get stronger and shorter? He was pretty much making this up at this point, but it seemed like it made sense. Plus it wasn't that much different than back propagation on a computer simulated feedforward neural network. The general idea was that you give the abstract neural network inputs, tell it what the outputs should be and then cycle through, having it adjust the weights algorithmically until the outputs were in the margin of error. It was relatively simple at this point. “But how do I make a thing do that?” he said, tapping his thumbs together. Electrical signals, he thought; it has something to do with that. The material would have to be mutable, but not unstable. “What if I just gave it an electron bath,” said Chad, rolling his eyes. He tensed up. “Wait.” He ran back to the lab. “This shouldn't work. Nothing about this should work.” Chad held a bathed circuit board in front of him. He had no idea if this really was as crazy as he'd thought, but it seemed to be working, so he wasn't too concerned. The first five or so baths had failed. He'd gotten one hell of a shock with the first one, and after starting at a significantly lower level for the next, hadn't noticed any changes until this attempt. Dr. Henderson probably wouldn't be too happy about him ruining half a dozen circuit boards, but at least he was getting somewhere now. The idea was pretty simple, overload the circuit board with electrons, but only to the point where it could contain all of them, then place a few nodes on it. Chad had started with three, to make things simple. He applied a current to one of the nodes and noticed a change in the material around it. The change spidered out, slowly, but it was definitely moving. After confirming that there was a reaction, he'd applied a current to two nodes simultaneously until the spidering had met. He almost expected the currents to stop going in that direction, with the whole like repelling like thing, but nope, the opposite happened. The spidering had stopped progressing in the other directions and the connecting paths had actually gotten larger and began straightening. After the path had gotten to a point where Chad felt it should hold, he applied a current to only one of the nodes and checked for a current in the other. Sure enough, there was one. He checked the third, theoretically unattached, node and confirmed that there was no current there. “Now I just need to figure out how to make it add or subtract ones and zeros.” He couldn't help but laugh at the thought. He had a vague idea of how he might do that, but it would take him way longer than a few days to figure it out. He checked his watch, which read 5:43 and decided to call it a night. Chad was just glad he didn't have anything to do this morning. He'd woken up at noon and scrambled to the lab. When he got there, he saw Dr. Henderson looking at his circuit board. “What did you do this poor thing?” said the doctor, pushing his gla**es up his nose as he turned to face Chad. “Dr. Henderson,” stuttered Chad. “I, uh, I . . .” “Well?” Dr. Henderson leaned forward, eyebrows co*ked. “It's gonna sound crazy, and it probably is, and I'm actually not sure if it really happened, but I'll show you.” Chad ran to the bench, grabbing the board on his way. He set it on the bench, grabbed a current generator, and applied it to one of the connected nodes. “So you're burning a circuit board?” asked Dr. Henderson incredulously as he watched over Chad's circuit. “Hold on a sec,” said Chad, checking for current in the other node. His heart sank. There wasn't one. Dr. Henderson straightened up and said, “Chad, you know you only have two days to present something, right?” “I know.” He looked at the board. As he did, he noticed the path that had formed last night had a minuscule gap. “Hold on a second, Dr. Henderson.” “I wasn't going anywhere at the moment,” said Dr. Henderson. “I mean let me try something and I'll show you in a minute or two.” Chad grabbed another current generator and, with Dr. Henderson watching, applied a current to both nodes again. He kept the current until the paths touched again and let the link grow. Once it looked to be about twice as strong as the one he'd had last night, he stopped. “I'm not seeing anything, Chad,” said Dr. Henderson, shrugging. “I know, I know, I know,” said Chad nervously. His hands were shaking as he applied the current to only one node and checked the other. It showed a current. Sighing, Chad said, “This is what I was hoping to show you.” Dr. Henderson looked at the reading and nodded. “Okay. What about the other node?” Dr. Henderson grabbed the other current generator and, once Chad had removed his generator, applied it to the unconnected node. “Hmm, no reading. What about that node when you apply a current to these two?” “It seems to be the same,” said Chad. “No reading in it.” He checked and, as he'd said, there was no reading in the unconnected node when a current was applied to either of the connected nodes. “Well, I'll be damned,” said Dr. Henderson taking a step back. “How'd you do it?” Chad spun around in his chair to face the doctor. Talking quickly, he detailed what he'd done last night and mentioned that the settings were recorded in his notes. “So blind luck,” said Dr. Henderson. “Pretty much,” said Chad. “What works works,” said Dr. Henderson, leaning over to look at the board. “Though I guess this really is a case of use it or lose it. So how are you going to get it to add?” “I don't know,” said Chad, his voice cracking. “I have some ideas, but I haven't gotten there yet.” “Well,” said Dr. Henderson, starting towards the door, “you'll have to present this, but it should be enough to keep your funding for now.” Chad waited until the door had shut behind Dr. Henderson and then sank into his chair as far as he could without falling out. He had no idea where to go from here, but at least he had something now.