Supercomputer to build 3D brain

[Lord Zentei]

Supercomputer to build 3D brain

Neuroscientists are to build the most detailed model of the human brain with the help of an IBM supercomputer.

Experts at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, will spend the next two years creating a 3D simulation of the neocortex.

This is the part of the brain thought to be responsible for language, learning, memory and complex thought.

The researchers believe the project will give them fresh insights into the most remarkable organ in the body.

"Modelling the brain at the cellular level is a massive undertaking because of the hundreds of thousands of parameters that need to be taken into account," said Henry Markram, the EPFL professor leading the project.

The Swiss scientist and his colleagues will have at their disposal an IBM's eServer Blue Gene supercomputer.

Up the pace

The system to be installed at their EPFL lab will take up the floor space of about four refrigerators, and will have a peak processing speed of at least 22.8 trillion floating-point operations per second (22.8 teraflops), making it one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Five years ago, no supercomputer in the world was capable of more than one teraflop.

The effort has been dubbed the Blue Brain Project. It is a daunting undertaking given the myriad of electro-chemical connections that must be mapped.

By using a supercomputer to run experiments in real time, Professor Markram hopes to accelerate substantially the pace of brain research.

"With an accurate computer-based model of the brain much of the pre-testing and planning normally required for a major experiment could be done 'in silico' rather than in the laboratory.

"With certain simulations we anticipate that a full day's worth of 'wet lab' research could be done in a matter of seconds on Blue Gene."

The Blue Brain Project will start with the neocortex but scientists expect eventually to produced a 3D model of the entire brain.

Researchers expect not only to get a better understanding of how the organ is wired up but also to use that "atlas" of neurocircuitry to probe how the brain functions - and malfunctions.

The scientists say the project could lead, for example, to new ideas on how psychiatric disorders develop - illnesses such as autism, schizophrenia, and depression.

Supercomputers have recently become a major tool in a range of advanced biological applications, from helping to piece together fragmented DNA information to the design of new drug molecules.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Daisies, Daiisies, Daiiiiiiiisesssss....

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Oooh, now there's a neat little ethical pickle waiting for an opportunity to happen. What happens when we get to the point we simulate an entire brain? As we well know, consciousness is the direct result of the same biochemical reactions that they're hoping to simulate here. If we simulate the entire brain, then we'll watch the simulated brain develop a conscience based on the inputs fed into it. Will it be deemed murder to turn off this simulation at the end of the day?

Laugh now, but we are very much approaching the point where we'll be able to simulate the human brain wholesale in a sufficiently powerful supercomputer or network of supercomputers. It may be a decade or two off, but it does make for good fodder for our current Mark I biochemical signal processing units.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Daisies, Daiisies, Daiiiiiiiisesssss....

Daisy, not Daisies.

And this is the Blue Gene computer they recently got to the top spot in the world supercomputer list. It's used primarily for mapping protein folding, a task as it is, but this seems intriguing.

[Zero]

Oooh, now there's a neat little ethical pickle waiting for an opportunity to happen. What happens when we get to the point we simulate an entire brain? As we well know, consciousness is the direct result of the same biochemical reactions that they're hoping to simulate here. If we simulate the entire brain, then we'll watch the simulated brain develop a conscience based on the inputs fed into it. Will it be deemed murder to turn off this simulation at the end of the day?

Laugh now, but we are very much approaching the point where we'll be able to simulate the human brain wholesale in a sufficiently powerful supercomputer or network of supercomputers. It may be a decade or two off, but it does make for good fodder for our current Mark I biochemical signal processing units.

If we could develope an absolute understanding of the processes behind conscious thought, could we also develope an AI? That's another bit people are going to get pissy over...

[Antares]

I suspect the pope will have some objections to do this. Not at start, but after they figure out what this yould mean for their "god" stuff.

Also some protestant fanatics in the US might have something against this development.

Imagine if a simulated brain develops a consciousness or even worse a conscience then this is direct evidence, that we are no more then the sum of ours parts.

Religious fanatics are then in serious trouble to explain what exactly the difference between a computer and a human is ... the conclusion, computers have souls perhaps?

[Zero]

Antares, it isn't necessarily true that if a consciousness developes, we're just a sum of our parts. It depends on the kind of consciousness developes. If we can convince said consciousness that it has a soul, and that there is a God, then we know that the human mind, spirituality, all that is crap. Could be a fun experiment...