Blue Brain Project

[Face]

Blue Brain Project

The Blue Brain Project is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level.

The aim of the project, founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of the École Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland, is to study the brain's architectural and functional principles. The project is headed by the Institute's director, Henry Markram. Using a Blue Gene supercomputer running Michael Hines's NEURON software, the simulation does not consist simply of an artificial neural network, but involves a biologically realistic model of neurons. It is hoped that it will eventually shed light on the nature of consciousness.

There are a number of sub-projects, including the Cajal Blue Brain, coordinated by the Supercomputing and Visualization Center of Madrid (CeSViMa), and others run by universities and independent laboratories in the UK, US, and Israel.

Progress

In November 2007[6], the project reported the end of the first phase, delivering a data-driven process for creating, validating, and researching the neocortical column.

Now that the column is finished, the project is currently busying itself with the publishing of initial results in scientific literature, and pursuing two separate goals:

1. construction of a simulation on the molecular level, which is desirable since it allows to study effects of gene expression;
2. simplification of the column simulation to allow for parallel simulation of large numbers of connected columns, with the ultimate goal of simulating a whole neocortex (which in humans consists of about 1 million cortical columns).

Neocortical column modelling
A neurocortical column model

The initial goal of the project, completed in December 2006,was the simulation of a rat neocortical column, which can be considered the smallest functional unit of the neocortex (the part of the brain thought to be responsible for higher functions such as conscious thought). Such a column is about 2 mm tall, has a diameter of 0.5 mm and contains about 60,000 neurons in humans; rat neocortical columns are very similar in structure but contain only 10,000 neurons (and 108 synapses). Between 1995 and 2005, Markram mapped the types of neurons and their connections in such a column.

Whole brain simulation

A longer term goal is to build a detailed, functional simulation of the physiological processes in the human brain: "It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years," Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project said in 2009 at the TED conference in Oxford. In a BBC World Service interview he said: "If we build it correctly it should speak and have an intelligence and behave very much as a human does."

Funding

The project is funded primarily by the Swiss government and secondarily by grants and some donations from private individuals. The EPFL bought the Blue Gene computer at a reduced cost because at that stage it was still a prototype and IBM was interested in exploring how different applications would perform on the machine. BBP was a kind of beta tester.

Summery

The Blue Brain Project is the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations.



Computer simulations in neuroscience hold the promise of dramatically enhancing the scientific method by providing a means to test hypotheses using predictive models of complex biological processes where experiments are not feasible. Of course, simulations are only as good as the quality of the data and the accuracy of the mathematical abstraction of the biological processes. The first phase of the Blue Brain Project therefore started after 15 years of systematically dissecting the microanatomical, genetic and electrical properties of the elementary unit of the neocortex – a single neocortical column, which is a little larger than the head of a pin. From the data gathered from 15,000 experiments in rat somatosensory cortex, it became possible to begin constructing a model of this part of the brain.

The project has focused, however, not only on building a model of the neocortical column, but on developing a generic facility that could allow rapid modeling, simulation and experimentation of any brain region, if the data can be measured and provided according to specifications. The facility has been used to build the first model of the neocortical column, which consists of 10,000 3D digitizations of real neurons that are populated with model ion channels constrained by the genetic makeup of over 200 different types of neurons. A parallel supercomputer is used to build the model and perform the experiments so that the behavior of the tissue can be predicted through simulations.

With the present simulation facility, the technical feasibility to model a piece of neural tissue has been demonstrated. The next steps will involve expansion of the project in two directions. First, the Blue Brain team is intensifying its efforts to extend the facility to support modeling of the subcellular domain, which will integrate additional levels of biological detail into the existing neocortical column model. Incorporating the molecular level structures, processes and effects is an important step towards pharmacological and medical research “in silico”. Second, the facility will be extended to integrate details of larger portions of cortex and other brain structures. Ultimately, given additional resources, the facility can be extended to permit whole brain modeling, simulation and experimentation.



More detailed information and a glimpse into the future of the Blue Brain Project.


http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page18699.html

[Face]

It is really interesting topic ha??

we will have Artificial Brain in the future.

then Artificial Humans....Like us...

[Face]

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[Neo]

Great article. Thanks.
It seems science is now trying to get close to Buddhism.

[Face]

sure.in the near future they will understand this...
scientist are always trying to do some thing new...but when we refer BUDDHISM we get that new thing in that..
they will understand the reality..

we can talk about that near future...other friend also join us...it is interesting to learn science by this way...JOLLY way...

try this forum and get more........