The Human Brain Project Has Begun Building the Super Brain

 Human Brain Project  

The multi-billion Euro Human Brain Project, co-funded by the European Union, plans to use supercomputers to model the human brain and then use the research to simulate drugs and treatments for diseases, create learning artificial intelligence and much more.

Members of the Human Brain Project officially kicked off their decade-long global project this week. The most ambitious neuroscience project in the world, with multiple sub-projects, the aim is to find a deeper and more meaningful understanding of  how the human brain operates.

The Human Brain Project (HBP) comprises 135 research institutions throughout Europe and is coordinated through the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL). At the project's launch,  neuroscientists, doctors, computer scientists, and roboticists will begin to refine the project in across the research platforms including neuroinformatics, brain simulation, high-performance computing, medical informatics, neuromorphic computing and neurorobotics, each composed of technological tools and methods to ensure the project’s objectives will be met. So far 13 sub-projects have been established.

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The researchers will set up and test the platforms over the next 30 months and in 2016, these platforms should be ready for testing by the Human Brain Project scientists and researchers from around the world.

As the extended video above demonstrates, the HBP researchers will have to manage enormous amounts of data. The mission of the neuroinformatics platform will be to extract the maximum amount of information possible from these sources and integrate it into a cartography that encompasses all the brain’s organizational levels, from the individual cell all the way up to the entire brain.

Neurorobotics, this research platform will focus on integrating neural network simulations into robots (including highly accurate virtual ones), who will benefit from new aptitudes such as learning abilities or resiliency.

Another important component will be to create neuro-inspired technologies. Neuromorphic chips that can imitate how networks of neurons function and take learn will be developed and expanded.

All of the sub-elements will feed to the main project, so coordinating everything is a huge management task —in terms of the people, resources and the massive amounts of data that will be collected and analyzed.  

The Human Brain Project hopes the results of the ten year effort will be information and knowledge that can be transferred into the development of new medical and information technologies.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health in May also announced an attempt to map the brain, the BRAIN Initiative.


SOURCE  Human Brain Project

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