Human Brain Project mobilizes scientists from 135 institutions
begins in Europe a gigantic project that aims, over ten years, revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain and create a “digital brain”.
Scientists
135 institutions – mostly European – are participating in the Human Brain Project (Human Brain Project, or BPH).
Apart from developing the technology required to create a computer that simulates brain function, the project also aims to build a database that will gather thousands of studies published each year in the field of neuroscience.
Learning
“We must begin to understand what makes the human brain unique, the basic mechanisms behind the cognition and behavior and how to objectively diagnose brain disorders,” said Henry Markram, director of BPH at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) , Switzerland.
He said the goal is to build new technology inspired by the way the brain “computes”.
The scientists involved say the current computing technologies are not sufficient to simulate complex brain functions. But within a decade, supercomputers will be powerful enough to create a first simulation of the human brain – even in version “draft”.
addition, you will need to develop computers with greater memory capacity to process vast amounts of information that will be generated.
BPH can be seen as an equivalent in neuroscience, the Human Genome Project, which involved thousands of scientists around the world working together to sequence our genetic code. That study took more than a decade and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
But while the Genome Project has mapped each of the three billion chemical bases that make up our DNA, the Human Brain Project – which will cost around $ 1.6 billion – is not intended to map the entire human brain .
With about 100 billion neurons (nerve cells) and 100 trillion synaptic connections, your brain is too complex.
So the idea is to create several computer simulations.
Scientists at the University of Manchester in England, are building a model that simulates about 1% of brain function. The Spinnaker project is led by Steve Furber, a pioneer of the computer industry.
“I spent my career building conventional computers and saw his performance grow spectacularly,” said Furber. “Still, they have difficulty doing things that humans do instinctively. Even small babies can recognize their mothers, but programming a computer to recognize a particular person is possible but very difficult.”
Computers neuromorphic
x Brain Computer
Computers are excellent for doing simple operations quickly. They are capable of performing mathematical calculations, for example, with much greater speed than man. The brain, however, is far more efficient when it comes to performing tasks that involve learning and understanding.
called supercomputers are getting faster. The biggest feature processing speeds measured in petaflops, or 1,000 trillion operations per second. (The acronym means Flops Floating Point Operations per Second).
Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-2, the most powerful in the world, is capable of performing 34 petaflops per second, but this capacity could rise to 100 petaflops per second.
However, that only begin to simulate the human brain activity in real time, you will need a computer Exaflop – ten times faster than the Tianhe-2 running at full power.
It is believed that the first computer Exaflop capable of a billion billion calculations per second, will be developed within a few years.
If
utilizes current technologies, however, a computer as powerful as this would require almost an entire power plant to feed it. The human brain in comparison needs only 30 watts, the power needed to turn on a light.
Unravel the secret of learning – scientists believe – would bring vast benefits to information technology, resulting in neuromorphic computers, or machines capable of “learning” as the human brain.
“With this knowledge, we could produce computer chips with specific cognitive abilities that mimic the human brain. For example, with the ability to analyze crowds, or make decisions from vast amounts of complex information,” says Markram.
These digital
brains also allow researchers to compare, using computer models, healthy and diseased brains.
Disease Brain
A central objective of the HBP is to let the experts have a deeper understanding of the scientific bases of diseases of the brain, creating a map of neurological disorders and showing how they relate to each other. The team hopes that this will help mental health professionals to diagnose and treat brain diseases.
its high cost, the BPH is being criticized. Some believe, for example, that the project can drain resources that could be allocated to other projects neuroscientific research.
Others question whether the HBP would not be too ambitious, and it will be able to achieve your goal: to produce, within a decade, a revolution in how we understand the human brain.
Steve Furber believes, however, that this is the time to try: “Let’s make progress, even if it does not reach that ultimate goal. E (this progress) will bring great benefits to medicine, computing and society.”
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