Science fiction is turning into science fact at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). The Blue Brain Project was started in 2005 to “reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations.”
In fiction, the creation of this kind of thing never seems to work out so well ("My God! Igor we have created a monster" is a stock line from old science fiction films). Then of course there was HAL the computer who decided the space mission wasn’t going according to its plan in "2001: A Space Odyssey."
The scientists at EPFL hope to avoid these problems and stress they are not creating artificial intelligence. Their goal is to produce a “physiological simulation for biomedical applications.”
Elements of Rat Brains already Duplicated
Dr. Henry Markram is director of the Blue Brain Project and he gave a presentation on progress at the TED Global Conference in Oxford, England on July 21, 2009. He told the conference that within 10 years he would be able to send a hologram to a deliver a lecture. He said creating an artificial brain would be of great help in diagnosing and treating mental illness; great news for the estimated two billion people who suffer from some sort of brain impairment.
Dr. Markram and his team have already simulated parts of a rat brain.
Neocortical Column Focus of Research
The cerebral cortex, which accounts for about 80 percent of the human brain, governs memory, thinking, reflection, empathy, communicating, and other functions. The Blue Brain Project website points out that, “The cortex first appeared in mammals, and it has a fundamentally simple repetitive structure that is the same across all mammalian species."
There are billions of neurons in the brain that are connected by a kind of biological wiring. Information is exchanged among neurons that “are organized into basic functional units, cylindrical volumes 0.5 mm wide by 2 mm high, each containing about 10,000 neurons that are connected in an intricate but consistent way.”
Scientists say these units, known as a neocortical columns, operate in much the same way as a microcircuit in a computer.
Supercomputer Needed for Calculations
Professor Markram and his team are picking apart and mapping the neocortical columns. Reporting on the research for BBC News (July 22, 2009) Jonathan Fildes wrote, “The project now has a software model of ‘tens of thousands’ of neurons – each one of which is different – which has allowed them to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column.
"Although each neuron is unique, the team has found the patterns of circuitry in different brains have common patterns.”
With the aid of algorithms and a supercomputer the scientists hope to make the model come “alive.”
“You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron,” Professor Markram said. “So you need ten thousand laptops.” However, the Blue Brain Project uses an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors.
Early Research Shows Promise
It’s early days in the project but the BBC’s Fildes reports that “Simulations have started to give the researchers clues about how the brain works.
“For example, they can show the brain a picture – say, of a flower – and follow the electrical activity in the machine.”
This is a long way from a reasoning electronic “brain” but the search for a closer resemblance continues.
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