Artificial Brain Blue Brain
To make the model come alive, the team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a
supercomputer.
"You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron," he said. "So you need ten
thousand laptops."
The research could give insights into brain disease
Instead, he uses an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors.
Simulations have started to give the researchers clues about how the brain works.
For example, they can show the brain a picture - say, of a flower - and follow the electrical
activity in the machine.
"You excite the system and it actually creates its own representation," he said.
Ultimately, the aim would be to extract that representation and project it so that researchers
could see directly how a brain perceives the world.
But as well as advancing neuroscience and philosophy, the Blue Brain project has other
practical applications.
For example, by pooling all the world's neuroscience data on animals - to create a "Noah's
Ark", researchers may be able to build animal models.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8164060.stm
Next
To make the model come alive, the team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a
supercomputer.
"You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron," he said. "So you need ten
thousand laptops."
The research could give insights into brain disease
Instead, he uses an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors.
Simulations have started to give the researchers clues about how the brain works.
For example, they can show the brain a picture - say, of a flower - and follow the electrical
activity in the machine.
"You excite the system and it actually creates its own representation," he said.
Ultimately, the aim would be to extract that representation and project it so that researchers
could see directly how a brain perceives the world.
But as well as advancing neuroscience and philosophy, the Blue Brain project has other
practical applications.
For example, by pooling all the world's neuroscience data on animals - to create a "Noah's
Ark", researchers may be able to build animal models.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8164060.stm
Next
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