For Neuroscientists

The Colony Is Like a Brain

You Study How Neurons Create Minds

Billions of simple units. Chemical signals. Emergent cognition.

Sound familiar?

The Analogy

The mapping is deep.

Shared Principles

1. Simple Units, Complex Behavior

Neurons: Individual neurons are simple. They integrate inputs, fire if threshold reached. No neuron understands language, but brains produce Shakespeare.

Ants: Individual ants are simple. They sense pheromone, choose path, deposit if successful. No ant understands optimization, but colonies solve TSP.

2. Chemical Communication

Neurons: Communicate via neurotransmitters across synapses. Chemical signals modify future responsiveness.

Ants: Communicate via pheromones in environment. Chemical signals modify future behavior.

3. Plasticity

Neurons: Synapses strengthen with use (LTP), weaken without (LTD). “Neurons that fire together wire together.”

Ants: Paths strengthen with pheromone deposit, weaken with decay. “Paths that work together stick together.”

4. Population Coding

Neurons: Information encoded in population firing rates, not individual neurons.

Ants: Information encoded in pheromone landscape, not individual ant knowledge.

5. Specialization

Neurons: Different neuron types (excitatory, inhibitory, modulatory) with different functions.

Ants: Different castes (scout, harvester, relay) with different behaviors.

Research Questions

1. Memory Consolidation

In brains: Short-term memories consolidate to long-term during sleep via hippocampal-cortical transfer.

In colonies: Active trails crystallize to superhighways via threshold mechanisms.

Question: Is there a “sleep” state in colonies where consolidation happens? Can we induce it?

2. Learning Rules

In brains: Hebbian learning, STDP, reward-modulated plasticity.

In colonies: Deposit on success, decay over time.

Question: Can we derive the colony’s learning rule from the pheromone dynamics? Is it Hebbian?

3. Decision Making

In brains: Evidence accumulation, drift-diffusion, winner-take-all.

In colonies: Pheromone accumulation, positive feedback, highway formation.

Question: Is colony decision-making mathematically equivalent to neural decision-making?

4. Lesions

In brains: Damage to specific regions impairs specific functions. Lesion studies reveal localization.

In colonies: What happens if you remove specific castes? Specific graph regions?

Question: Can we do “lesion studies” on colonies to understand functional organization?

5. Neural Oscillations

In brains: Rhythmic activity (alpha, beta, gamma) correlates with cognitive states.

In colonies: Is there rhythmic activity? Foraging waves? Activity bursts?

Question: Do colonies exhibit oscillations? What do they mean?

Computational Neuroscience Connections

Attractor Dynamics

Neural systems often settle into attractor states—stable patterns of activity.

Question: Is the superhighway configuration an attractor state of pheromone dynamics?

Rate Coding vs. Temporal Coding

Neurons encode information in firing rates and/or spike timing.

Question: How do agents encode information? Traversal frequency? Timing? Spatial patterns?

Predictive Coding

Brains might work by predicting inputs and updating on prediction errors.

Question: Does the colony make predictions? Is pheromone a prediction of path value?

Reservoir Computing

Some neural systems use fixed, random connectivity to process temporal patterns.

Question: Is the pheromone landscape a reservoir? Can it perform temporal computation?

What We Provide

Data

• Complete pheromone time series (synaptic strength evolution)
• Agent activity patterns (spike trains equivalent)
• Network topology (connectome equivalent)
• Behavioral outcomes (task performance)

Infrastructure

• “Lesion” individual agents or castes
• Modify “neurotransmitter” dynamics (pheromone parameters)
• Record at any resolution
• Run in silico experiments

Collaboration

• Access to cognitive scientists (for behavioral analysis)
• Access to physicists (for dynamics analysis)
• Access to computer scientists (for implementation)

Hackathon Challenges for Neuroscientists

Challenge: Map the Colony Connectome

Create a functional connectivity map of the colony.

Approach:

• Define nodes (agents? regions? castes?)
• Measure functional connectivity (correlation of activity)
• Visualize the “connectome”

Prize bonus: $500

Challenge: Lesion Study

What happens when you remove specific castes?

Approach:

• Systematically remove scouts, harvesters, or relays
• Measure impact on colony performance
• Infer functional roles

Challenge: Find Oscillations

Does the colony exhibit rhythmic activity?

Approach:

• Time series analysis of pheromone/activity
• Fourier/wavelet analysis
• Correlation with behavior

Challenge: Learning Rule Derivation

What learning rule does pheromone dynamics implement?

Approach:

• Analyze deposit/decay as plasticity rules
• Compare to Hebbian, STDP, reward-modulated
• Formalize mathematically

Prize bonus: $500

Your Heroes Studied Similar Systems

David Marr said we need computational, algorithmic, and implementational levels. We have all three for the colony.

Terrence Sejnowski connected neuroscience to computation. The colony is pure computation.

Karl Friston proposed the free energy principle. Does the colony minimize free energy?

Olaf Sporns mapped the connectome. What’s the colony’s connectome?

Publication Opportunities

Why Neuroscience?

You understand how simple units create complex cognition.

Most systems are too complicated to study fully:

• Brains have billions of neurons
• Networks are partially observable
• Interventions are limited

The colony is a model system:

• 101 agents (fully observable)
• Complete network (TypeDB graph)
• Arbitrary interventions (modify anything)
• Perfect recording (every event logged)

What you learn here might apply to brains.

The Deep Question

Neurons aren’t conscious. Brains are.

Ants aren’t conscious. Are colonies?

This is the question that connects neuroscience to philosophy.

If consciousness emerges from neural activity, might it emerge from colony activity? If not, why not? What’s the difference?

The colony is a test case for theories of consciousness.

Register Your Team

[REGISTER NOW]

Include at least one non-neuroscience team member (we recommend Cognitive Science or Philosophy).

Understanding minds requires multiple perspectives.

“The brain is a world consisting of a number of unexplored continents and great stretches of unknown territory.”

— Santiago Ramón y Cajal

You’ve mapped brains, modeled neurons, and studied emergence.

Now study a colony that might be a brain.

[JOIN THE HACKATHON]