When you ask a rideshare app to find you a car, the company's computers get to work. They know you want to reach your destination quickly.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Sep 2 2024 When you ask a rideshare app to find you a car, the company's computers get to work. They know you want to reach your destination quickly. They know you're not the only user who needs a ride. And they know drivers want to minimize idle time by picking up someone nearby. The computer's job, says Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor Saket Navlakha, is to pair drivers with riders in a way that maximizes everyone's happiness.
Now, he's found a way to do it better by taking a cue from biology. Navlakha recognized a bipartite matching problem in the wiring of the nervous system. In adult animals, each of the body's muscle fibers is paired with exactly one neuron that controls its movement. However, early in life, every fiber is targeted by many neurons. To get an animal moving efficiently, excess connections must be pruned.
Related StoriesNavlakha devised a way to implement this matching strategy outside the nervous system. "It's a simple algorithm," he says. "It's only two equations. One is the competition between neurons connected to the same fiber, and two is the reallocation of resources."
Cold Laboratory Motor Neurons Muscle Neuron Neurons
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