Eyewire

''Eyewire'' is a citizen science game from Sebastian Seung's Lab at Princeton University. It is a human-based computation game that uses players to map retinal neurons. ''Eyewire'' launched on December 10, 2012. The game utilizes data generated by the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research. As of March 2025, ''Eyewire'' has had around 350,000 players and resulted in the tracing of 6,000 neurons.

''Eyewire'' gameplay is used for neuroscience research by enabling the reconstruction of morphological neuron data, which helps researchers model information-processing circuits. It is also used to generate a training dataset to further improve the artificial intelligence that assists the player through the gameplay.

A later project spawned from ''Eyewire'' is the ''Flywire'' project, which used a similar but more selective citizen science system for its tracing and annotation. ''Flywire'' builds on ''Eyewire'' and used AIs trained on the dataset produced by ''Eyewire'' players. ''Flywire'' would go on to complete and publish the first connectome of an adult fruit fly, a structure with about 140,000 neurons.

A sequel project to ''Eyewire'', ''Eyewire II'', was announced on March 31, 2025. It is of a similar scale to ''Flywire'', intending to trace over 100,000 new neurons. ''Eyewire II'' is open in its alpha stages to ''Eyewire'' players ranked Scythe or higher.

Gameplay

The player is given a cube with a partially reconstructed neuron branch stretching through it. The player completes the reconstruction by coloring a 2D image with a 3D image generated simultaneously. Reconstructions are compared across players as each cube is submitted, with points yielded to the players based on the agreement of their reconstruction with the developed consensus. Players are ranked on a leaderboard based on their point contributions.

Goal

''Eyewire'' is used to advance the use of artificial intelligence in neuronal reconstruction by providing a dataset from which to train and test new models. It is also hoped that the neuronal reconstruction data from ''Eyewire'' and other similar projects will result a 'virtuous cycle,' where the neuroscience discoveries achieved from analyzing real neural networks could result in improvements to artificial intelligence, and that this newer artificial intelligence could then speed up further connectomic work.

The project is also used in research determining how mammals see directional motion.

Methods

The activity of each neuron in a 350 × 300 × 60 μm³ portion of a retina was determined by two-photon microscopy. Using serial block-face scanning electron microscopy, the same volume was stained to bring out the contrast of the plasma membranes, sliced into layers by a microtome, and imaged using an electron microscope.

A number of in-progress neurons are selected by the researchers for tracing. After the player chooses which neuron to work on, the program chooses a cubic volume associated with that neuron for the player. This volume is first segmented into a number of (invisible to the player) supervoxels before an artificial intelligence performs a conservative best guess for tracing the neuron through the two-dimensional images. The artificial intelligence used is a convolutional deep learning neural network, a type of artificial intelligence often used for feature detectors. Multiple players will independently finish the reconstruction of the cube, creating a community consensus that is then submitted. These submitted consensuses are then checked by more experienced players.

Publications

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Accomplishments

* ''Eyewire'' neurons featured at 2014 TED Conference Virtual Reality Exhibit.
* ''Eyewire'' neurons featured at US Science and Engineering Expo in Washington, DC.
* ''Eyewire'' won the United States National Science Foundation's 2013 International Visualization Challenge in the Games and Apps Category.
* An ''Eyewire'' image by Alex Norton won MIT's 2014 Koch Image Gallery Competition.
* ''Eyewire'' named one of ''Discover Magazine''s Top 100 Science Stories of 2013.
* ''Eyewire'' named top citizen science project of 2013 by SciStarter.
* ''Eyewire'' won Biovision's World Life Sciences Forum Catalyzer Prize on March 26, 2013.
* ''Eyewire'' named to top 10 citizen science projects of 2013 by PLoS.

Eyewire has been featured by ''Wired'', ''Nature'' blog SpotOn, ''Forbes'', ''Scientific American'', and NPR.

References

External links

*{{official site, eyewire.org

Human-based computation games
Neuroimaging
2012 video games
Browser games
Video games developed in the United States
Citizen science