Mozak: Brainbuilder

The key to Mozak is to allow humans to do what they are good at, and computers to do what they are good at. In this case, humans exceedingly outperform computers with their ability to resolve and trace objects in 3 dimensions. Although computers can complete the reconstruction of robustly traced neurons, many neurons have delicate and highly branched structures that your eyes will distinguish far better. Your ability to do this will help us to build systems that work better at doing this, and can lead to focused discoveries in this space. Like other science games, computers can quickly simulate, verify, and potentially perform local optimizations on player designs — something that would be tedious and inefficient for humans to perform.

By discovering new 3-dimensional neuronal arborization patterns, eventually matching them to firing and genetic patterns, and then simulating them in the game, we hope that players will come up with new ideas that can be applied to ongoing research in the field.