HBP's attempt to build an artificial brain

In my last post I mentioned the Human Brain Project briefly and wrote that its major aim is to construct an emulation of the human brain. In this post, I am going to discuss in a little more detail how this project is going to do this and who stands behind it.

The HBP is funded by The European Union which contributed about 1 billion Euros and is coordinated by neuroscientist Henry Markram. The project is managed from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Henry Markram

In a nutshell, the initiative's major goals are to identify how the human brain operates and, based on this, build a digital model. On this it would ne possible to conduct experiments as conductiing experiments on animals and humans is limited. According to Markram, the researchers are trying to bring together a fundamental understanding of the brain which turns out to be a big challenge as all the knowledge on neuroscience is extremly fragmented. Data, that was published in neuroscience, needs first gathering before it can be applied to a computer.

Another challenge is to translate this gathered data into a computer model. The actual challenge here is to not only consider individual neurons but ro regard the whole picture, including all the connections between synapses. In other words, the first step is to harvest all the technological mysteries of the brain (how it transmits, processes and stores information) in order to, in the second step, construct a supercomputer.

In 2006, HBP developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column of a rat and it behaves precisely like its biological example. Although this column is only about 2 mm long, it contains about 10,000 neurons and 30 million synapses. This emulation is the most advanced supercomputer and is, compared to the neocortex, a huge construct.

The IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer

Of course, the human brain contains many more neurons and synapses and its simulation would take up even more space. Not to mention the huge electricity bill.

Althoug this project is facing enormous obstacles, the actual outcome will be one of the most significant results in the study of neuroscience and medicine. By being able to conduct experiments in an innovative way and therefore understanding the brain's functions, it would also be possible for the future human kind to understand its malfunctions.

In a previous post, I summerised a few neurologic disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease. One cane notice that there is no treatment for any of the diseases mentioned. If HBP succeeds, early diagnosis, personalized medicine and advanced medical research would be an advantageous consequence of the knowledge obtained from exact emulation of a human brain.


Sources:
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-incredible-challenge-of-digitizing-the-human-brain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0ZPFffdmXg