Blue Brain Project

In the Blue Brain Project, the scientists are trying to build / replicate human brain using the world’s most powerful computer. The aim of the project, founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland) is to study the brain’s architectural and functional principles. The project is headed by the Institute’s director, Henry Markram. Using a Blue Gene supercomputer running Michael Hines’s NEURON software, the simulation does not consist simply of an artificial neural network, but involves a biologically realistic model of neurons.

• Under the project, it is intended to combine all the information so far uncovered about brain’s mysterious workings – and replicate them on a screen, right down to the level of individual cells and molecules.
• If it works it could be revolutionary for understanding devastating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and even shedding light into how we think, and make decisions.
• Professor Henry Markram, based in Switzerland, is working with scientists from across Europe including the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Cambridge. They hope to complete it within 12 years.
• In November 2007, the project reported the end of the first phase, delivering a data-driven process for creating, validating, and researching the neocortical column.

By 2005 the first single cellular model was completed. The first artificial cellular neocortical column of 10,000 cells was built by 2008. By July 2011 a cellular mesocircuit of 100 neocortical columns with a million cells in total was built. A cellular rat brain is planned for 2014 with 100 mesocircuits totalling a hundred million cells. Finally a cellular human brain is predicted possible by 2023 equivalent to 1000 rat brains with a total of a hundred billion cells.