Blue Brain

There is an interesting Seed magazine article about a project called Blue Brain. Blue Brain is an attempt by scientists to simulate an entire brain via a computer. So far, they have already simulated a part of a rat's brain called the neocortex. This specific part of the rat brain contains approximately 10,000 neurons and 30 million synapses. The amount of computing power that was necessary to accomplish this was about 22.8 teraflops. An entire human brain by comparison has 100 billion neurons and 1 trillion synapses, so it may be another 10 to 20 years before they can actually simulate the entire human brain.

In the future it might be possible to get your own brain scanned and then you could have an identical virtual brain on a computer. You could run simulations on this virtual brain such as testing out specific drugs or other therapies like transcranial magnetic stimulation. This could be a huge boon to mental illness and potentially human enhancement as well. You would be able to see what kind of effect doing a specific therapy would have on your virtual brain before you actually did it on yourself. You might also be able to create a virtual backup of your own brain periodically. So if your brain was ever damaged, it could potentially be repaired back to its original state. The article also discusses conciousness which may be the most interesting aspect of this project.

"There is nothing inherently mysterious about the mind or anything it makes," Markram says. "Consciousness is just a massive amount of information being exchanged by trillions of brain cells. If you can precisely model that information, then I don't know why you wouldn't be able to generate a conscious mind."

The big question is, what level of detail in a virtual computer model do you need to successfully replicate conciousness? To me, that is the most fascinating question. Lets say they are successful in accurately modeling the brain and it functions in exactly the same way as a real brain. What if that virtual brain, however, never shows any signs of conciousness? What will be the salient difference between a real brain and the virtual brain in that case. The researchers sound like they want to have a virtual rat brain control a rat robot, presumably to see if it acts like a concious real rat.

"Installing Blue Brain in a robot will also allow it to develop like a real rat. The simulated cells will be shaped by their own sensations, constantly revising their connections based upon the rat's experiences. "What you ultimately want," Markram says, "is a robot that's a little bit unpredictable, that doesn't just do what we tell it to do." His goal is to build a virtual animal—a rodent robot—with a mind of its own."

I think it would be amazing if they could actually get a robot rat with the artificial brain to act like a real rat. If they could, then it would also bring up ethical questions. If they can simulate a human brain and it might be concious, what kind of rights does that virtual brain have? What kind of responsiblities do the researchers have when they go about creating a virtual human brain? So there are many interesting questions pertaining to this new science. Overall, being able to reliably simulate the human brain on a computer could be quite revolutionary. Some more interesting information about this can be found at the Next Big Future blog.