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Redfairen

(1,276 posts)
Wed Jan 30, 2013, 06:43 PM Jan 2013

New $1.6 billion supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

In what is the largest and most significant effort to re-create the human brain to date, an international group of researchers has secured $1.6 billion to fund the incredibly ambitious Human Brain Project. For the next ten years, scientists from various disciplines will seek to understand and map the network of over a hundred billion neuronal connections that illicit emotions, volitional thought, and even consciousness itself. And to do so, the researchers will be using a progressively scaled-up multilayered simulation running on a supercomputer.

And indeed, the project organizers are not thinking small. The entire team will consist of over 200 individual researchers in 80 different institutions across the globe. They're even comparing it the Large Hadron Colllider in terms of scope and ambition, describing the Human Brain Project as "Cern for the brain." The project, which will be based in Lausanne, Switzerland, is an initiative of the European Commission.

According to scientists working on the project, HBP will build new platforms for "neuromorphic computing" and "neurorobotics," allowing researchers to develop new computing systems and robots based on the architecture and circuitry of the brain. The researchers will attempt to reconstruct the human brain piece-by-piece, and gradually bring these cognitive components into an overarching supercomputer.

"The support of the HBP is a critical step taken by the EC to make possible major advances in our understanding of how the brain works," said Swedish Nobel Laureate Torsten Wiesel in a recent statement. "HBP will be a driving force to develop new and still more powerful computers to handle the massive accumulation of new information about the brain, while the neuroscientists are ready to use these new tools in their laboratories." He added that the research may also give rise to fundamentally new computer architectures modeled after the brain.


http://io9.com/5980117/new-16-billion-supercomputer-project-will-attempt-to-simulate-the-human-brain

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mike_c

(36,214 posts)
1. it's all fun and games until Skynet goes live....
Wed Jan 30, 2013, 06:47 PM
Jan 2013

Just sayin'.

All kidding aside though, I'm REALLY looking forward to reading the papers that emerge from this project.

 

NoOneMan

(4,795 posts)
3. That's a lot of dough
Wed Jan 30, 2013, 07:03 PM
Jan 2013

I can create human-like intelligence by simply having sex a few times. I think nature has this one covered

DreamGypsy

(2,252 posts)
5. A bit of history ... and skepticism about the Human Brain Project...
Wed Jan 30, 2013, 07:21 PM
Jan 2013

Personally I think the HBP is a cool idea. Only time will tell what the results will be...but isn't that the whole point of scientific exploration??

After reading the post and the article I did a little followup searching.

I found this interesting article from the 22 February 2012 issue of Nature: Computer modelling: Brain in a box : Henry Markram wants €1 billion to model the entire human brain. Skeptics don't think he should get it.

Officially, the Swiss Academy of Sciences meeting in Bern on 20 January was an overview of large-scale computer modelling in neuroscience. Unofficially, it was neuroscientists' first real chance to get answers about Markram's controversial proposal for the Human Brain Project (HBP) — an effort to build a supercomputer simulation that integrates everything known about the human brain, from the structures of ion channels in neural cell membranes up to mechanisms behind conscious decision-making.

Markram, a South-African-born brain electrophysiologist who joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) a decade ago, may soon see his ambition fulfilled. The project is one of six finalists vying to win €1 billion (US$1.3 billion) as one of the European Union's two new decade-long Flagship initiatives.

<snip>

As the response at the meeting made clear, however, there is deep unease about Markram's vision. Many neuroscientists think it is ill-conceived, not least because Markram's idiosyncratic approach to brain simulation strikes them as grotesquely cumbersome and over-detailed. They see the HBP as overhyped, thanks to breathless media reports about what it will accomplish. And they're not at all sure that they can trust Markram to run a project that is truly open to other ideas.

“We need variance in neuroscience,” declared Rodney Douglas, co-director of the Institute for Neuroinformatics (INI), a joint initiative of the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Given how little is known about the brain, he said, “we need as many different people expressing as many different ideas as possible” — a diversity that would be threatened if so much scarce neuroscience research money were to be diverted into a single endeavour.


Some good history, commentary, criticism, diagrams, and a video at the link.

dimbear

(6,271 posts)
7. If they try to elicit emotions rather than illicit them, their computer will be better behaved.
Wed Jan 30, 2013, 10:30 PM
Jan 2013

Just sayin.

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