Contact:
Mag. My Hue McGowran
Phone: +43-1-81140-308
E-Mail: mcgowran@newsfox.com
| Pressbox | 
|
Lausanne (pte042/06.06.2005/14:40) - IBM http://www.ibm.com and scientists from the Brain and Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytecnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) http://www.epfl.ch , Switzerland, are collaborating to build a supercomputer that simulates the brain.
The 'Blue Brain' project http://bluebrainproject.epfl.ch/ will see the creation of a virtual brain that may elucidate aspects of human cognition that include perception, memory and maybe even consciousness. It may even lead to insight into psychiatric disorders like autism, schizophrenia and depression.
Henry Markram, director of the Brain and Mind Institute, says that the computer will make it possible to explore the electrical code that the brain uses to represent the world. He and his colleagues have been 'mapping' the brain for over a decade, experimenting on mice brains to build a database of the neural architecture of the neocortex, the largest and most complex part of the human brain.
Until now scientific knowledge of the brain has been limited, "But," says IBM's lead researcher on the project, Charles Peck, "there has been a convergence of the biological data and the computational resources."
The Blue Gene computer http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/ has a peak processing power of at least 22.8 teraflops, which, coupled with efforts to map brain circuits, now makes this possible.
"We have the largest database in the world of single neurons that have been recorded and stained," says Markram. This database will be used in the beginning phase of the Blue Brain construction by modelling the neural circuits that are repeated throughout the brain, the electrical structure of neocortical columns.
Building the supercomputer will take up to ten years.
(end)
|
|
