Virtual brain worth one billion euros

What is more important for humanity at this stage of development - the creation of artificial intelligence or a colony on Mars? The European Committee decided to go the other way and approved the development of the most unprecedented project to simulate the human brain. The scale of this event can be compared only with the collider. The Human Brain Project will give European scientists a ten-year job until 2023 and is estimated at 1.19 billion euros.

Who needs it? First of all, to neuroscientists. They study the structure, functioning, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, and pathology of the brain. Huge money is spent on researching all these items in many countries. This is not strange - the brain is the most mysterious object of the human body, and his research can open our eyes to many things. Decades will pass before we can write down every gene, protein, cell, and synapse involved in the brain. And the allocation of one billion euros for the development of a grandiose project is only a small step towards the knowledge of the most important human organ.

Dozens of universities of the European Union, the USA, Israel and other developed countries will take part in the Human Brain Project. The main goal of the billion-dollar project is to create an open platform that simulates the functions of the human brain, a global network such as a framework. It will be possible to test computer models of emulation and test new methods of treatment of diseases. Scientists believe that without such a virtual simulation, experimental research will develop very slowly. On the other hand, the virtual brain can combine all the information currently available collected in the framework of experiments - and give it an unambiguous vector.

Remember how scientists captured the thoughts of a zebrafish? The human brain is not an example harder. Below you will find illustrations of some neurobiological experiments.

1. The generated three-dimensional model of a network of neurons, “sleeping” neurons are marked in blue, active ones in red.

2. Three-dimensional model of an individual neuron.

3. The work of thousands of pyramidal neurons during a computer simulation, blue marked "sleeping" neurons, red - active.

4. Simulation of a complete cortical module (cortical column) - a group of neurons located in the cerebral cortex perpendicular to its surface. Within the same minicolumn neurons have the same purpose. You see exactly half of the cells in a module.

5. Full cortical module.

6. Fluorescent photograph of the CA1 hippocampal and part of the neocortex (upper right). Cellular nuclei are marked in blue, processes in glial cells are marked in yellow.

7. A neuromorphic chip containing 384 "neurons" and 100,000 "synapses" works about 100 thousand times faster than a biological analog. Perhaps such chips will be the basis of the future supercomputer. The chip was created by the specialists of the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

8. The project neuromorphic chip.

9. The SpiNNaker board with 48 nodes and 864 ARM processor cores is capable of real-time computing the model of the processes occurring in the bee's brain. The system is scalable, it is possible to connect together a variety of SpiNNaker boards.

Recall also that not so long ago, Canadian scientists have created fully functioning virtual brains. But this project is hardly comparable in scale with the Blue Brain Project.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/computers/virtualnyj-mozg-cenoj-v-odin-milliard-evro.html.