Summer \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Under the Lily Moon<\/p>\n
Oops. \u00a0The Human Brain Project<\/a> has a featured article in this month’s SA.<\/p>\n The blue brain project was an early work created, like the Human Brain Project, at the Brain and Mind Institute<\/a>. \u00a0Don’t know what they’re smoking over there in Switzerland, but it must be powerful stuff.<\/p>\n The blue brain project has a feature article in Scientific American:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *”Reconstructing the brain piece by piece and building a virtual brain in a supercomputer\u2014these are some of the goals of the Blue Brain Project<\/a>. \u00a0The virtual brain will be an\u00a0exceptional tool<\/strong>\u00a0giving neuroscientists a new understanding of the brain and a better understanding of neurological diseases.<\/p>\n The Blue Brain project began in 2005 with an agreement between the EPFL and IBM, which supplied the BlueGene\/L supercomputer acquired by EPFL to build the virtual brain.<\/p>\n The\u00a0computing power<\/strong>\u00a0needed is considerable. Each simulated neuron requires the equivalent of a laptop computer.\u00a0A model of the whole brain would have billions. Supercomputing technology is rapidly approaching a level where simulating the whole brain becomes a concrete possibility.<\/p>\n As a first step, the project succeeded in simulating a\u00a0rat cortical column<\/strong>. This neuronal network, the size of a pinhead, recurs repeatedly in the cortex. A rat\u2019s brain has about 100,000 columns of in the order of 10,000\u00a0neurons each. In humans, the numbers are dizzying\u2014a human cortex may have as many as \u00a0two million columns, each having in the order of 100,000 neurons each.<\/p>\n Blue Brain is a resounding success. In five years of work, Henry Markram\u2019s team has perfected a facility that can create realistic models of one of the brain\u2019s essential building blocks. This process is entirely data driven and essentially automatically executed on the supercomputer. Meanwhile the generated models show a behavior already observed in years of neuroscientific experiments. These models will be basic building blocks for larger scale models leading towards a\u00a0complete virtual brain<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n A reasonable caveat:<\/a> \u00a0I’m a big fan of IBM’s\u00a0Brain and Mind Institute<\/a>\u00a0(BMI) and the\u00a0Blue Brain<\/a>\u00a0project. Initiated in May 2005, the Blue Brain project is an attempt to to model the mammalian cerebral cortex with computers. The intention is not to re-create the actual physical structure of the brain, but to simulate it using arrays of supercomputers. Ultimately, the developers are hoping to create biologically realistic models of neurons. In fact, the results of the simulation will be experimentally tested against biological columns.<\/p>\n But I take exception to the recent claim that IBM has created a simulation that is supposedly on par, in terms of complexity and scale, with an actual cat’s brain. The media tends to sensationalize these sorts of achievements, and in this case, grossly overstate (and even misstate) the actual accomplishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summer \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Under the Lily Moon Oops. \u00a0The Human Brain Project has a featured article in this month’s SA. The blue brain project was an early work created, like the Human … Continue reading The Big Blue Brain<\/span>