Thursday, June 19, 2014

Human Brain Project: the European Attempt to Model the Human Brain

The machines might be getting smarter, but they're still a long way off from emulating the dizzying complexity of the human brain. We don’t even understand how our own brains work yet. But the Human Brain Project, which is funded by the EU and was launched towards the end of last year, plans to work on both of these simultaneously.

It aims to build a model of the complete human brain “in silico,” or on a supercomputer, in order to give neuroscientists a new tool to understand how the brain functions, as well as informing technologies that could emulate the brain’s computing power. According to its vision statement, “The goal of the project is to build a completely new ICT infrastructure for neuroscience, and for brain-related research in medicine and computing, catalysing a global collaborative effort to understand the human brain and its diseases and ultimately to emulate its computational capabilities.”

Basically, they want to build a virtual brain.

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