Image: Courtesy of Arthur W. Toga/Laboratory of Neuro Imaging and Randy Buckner/Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging (www.humanconnectomeproject.org)
In Brief
- Computer simulation will introduce ever greater verisimilitude into digital depictions of the workings of the human brain.
- By the year 2020 digital brains may be able to represent the inner workings of a single brain cell or even the whole brain.
- A sim brain can act as a stand-in for the genuine article, thus fostering a new understanding of autism or permitting virtual drug trials.
More In This Article
Reductionist biology—examining individual brain parts, neural circuits and molecules—has brought us a long way, but it alone cannot explain the workings of the human brain, an information processor within our skull that is perhaps unparalleled anywhere in the universe. We must construct as well as reduce and build as well as dissect. To do that, we need a new paradigm that combines both analysis and synthesis. The father of reductionism, French philosopher René Descartes, wrote about the need to investigate the parts and then reassemble them to re-create the whole.
Putting things together to devise a complete simulation of the human brain is the goal of an undertaking that intends to construct a fantastic new scientific instrument. Nothing quite like it exists yet, but we have begun building it. One way to think of this instrument is as the most powerful flight simulator ever built—only rather than simulating flight through open air, it will simulate a voyage through the brain. This “virtual brain” will run on supercomputers and incorporate all the data that neuroscience has generated to date.
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22 Comments
Add CommentWill it explain how neurons work? Until you do that it is no true simulation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA functional simulation may help us quite a lot. For example, in a wind tunnel simulation, one doesn't need to simulate every oxygen, nitrogen and carbon atom that make up the wind, but the simulation still does a good job of helping us with aerodynamic engineering.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is only loosely analogue to the brain simulation though, since there is really no consensus on what a "true" brain simulation is. Do we have to simulate each neuron? or each dendrite? or each atom? or even subatomic component? The best way to find out may be to just simulate the best resolution we can, see what happens, then iterate from there.
Years ago a single neuron recognized a face. Not a network of neurons, not a brain, a neuron. What is a computer? An information processing device. What is the DNA in each nucleus or bacterium but an information processing device. In short, a computer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe human body contains trillions of tiny organic computers, the brain's neurons are simply committed information processors, so committed they cannot process nutrition the way other cells can and must therefor be nourished by glial cells and astrocytes. Thus the brain is a network of networks, an organic Internet, tying billions of tiny organic computers together. So long as we continue to think of the brain as a computer, so long as we continue in ignorance of how our cells process the information they do, our models of the brain will continue to be erroneous and thus failures.
Mike the Headless Chicken -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMike the Headless Chicken (April 1945 – March 1947) was a Wyandotte rooster that lived for 18 months after its head had been cut off. …
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It’s things like this that Science should pick up from and not that old untrue stuff. The amount of time and money waisted on brain research is staggering. I would highly recommend that ALL education start again using truth as it’s base.
To reason with anything, one must first know the true reason!
At its poles, a cell of anything contains the complete make up of the entity that produced that cell. The brain is new to evolution having it’s cells with four nuclei orbits producing eight poles instead of three orbits that produce the hexagon of life (us and the tree).
A plant within it’s make up will contain a gaggle of instinct cells. I have not discovered where yet but I have discovered that they hang out at the base of a brain and spinal cord.
We being the evolution of a plant or tree and having our bodies evolve with this separate and new species (brain) for reasons assume the brain runs our body. WELL IT DOES NOT
comment #s 1, 6, 9, 17, 19, 22, 28, 30, 33, 34, 38,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=living-in-a-quantum-world
Sorry Bruce, but it's more complex than that. Chickens can survive decapitation because so much of the hindbrain handles matters, and it is the hindbrain that's left behind after a decapitation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the other hand the human brain is a much more complex device. A complexity of complexities handling much more than a chicken's brain can. Compared to the human brain Congressional machinations are simple, and even interactions on the galactic scale have their limitations.
And so what if the cells of the brain duplicate information found in every other cell of the brain, that doesn't mean the data is being used the same way by all the cells. Each neuron puts the data it contains to its own use, and that use is coordinated in the network and the network of networks the cell is a part of.
And one thing we're learning is that the glia communicate among each other and with the neurons among them. Meaning that they are part of the information sharing networks we once thought as peculiar to the neurons alone.
In short, your view of the brain is simplistic and wrong.
Unknown to them and they is that 100% of the brain functions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAURA OF THE BODY
Aura mutates outside the body. The body secretes a force (gas) (info cells)! These mutate with info cells of the atmosphere. An accumulation of these cells takes place at the body’s poles (hands).
The brain’s knowledge is also derived from senses. A very important sense of my discovery is body aura. Matured body aura intermingles with brain cell aura; this is mostly accomplished by hand/head contact. Sleep is a perfect example; now you know why you rest your head on a cold, bony hand.
Just watch people or pay attention to yourself; little time lapses before some type of hand/head contact is made. This discovery explains why groups of people look alike, women menstruate at the same time, why a group of people with gentle thoughts are gentle, and at the ball game excited, and then there is mob mentality. Take a few of these gentle kids, throw them in with a mob and then watch out.
This discovered force is very powerful and runs our world. It affects all life. It controls and protects the evolution of every species on earth – a flock of geese, a pack of wolves, a school of fish, a pine grove, and a city.
Hearing and Sensing Sound
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLightly scratch the top left side of your head. The scratching you hear or what you sense is prominent at the top left side of your head. Moving around the skull sensing this scratching you can, in your mind, hear and pinpoint the location.
A big difference in scratching the ear, now you are hearing not sensing.
Do the same at the tip of your nose, lips, tongue and behold, no sound and no sense.
Down the body just past the jaw the sense of sound ceases.
Now try all this using your big toe (just kidding :)
Bruce, you have a bete noir, a model of how reality works and so you're not going to give it up. Since you won't listen it does me no good to explain things, so I'll let you continue in your wilfull ignorance
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article strikes me as "scientific" hucksterism in pursuit of government funding. I see no good argument for funding the whole extravagant boondoggle up front. Let the pieces compete for funding incrementally and on the basis of prior success and reasonable near-term goals. Even the best ideas have a horizon of a few years. The human genome project is a good example, as is the superconducting super collider. The kind of simulation that is being advocated has many reasons to fail, not the least of which is the range of scales over which it must be validated. Building a model that exhibits the behavior you want is easy; building the case that you got the underlying causality and phenomenology correct at all scales is a tad more difficult.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis aint no hula hoop and should not be subject to such marketing. I for instance have asked for two point two billion dollars to properly introduce to the world (an affordable to all) cure for every known disease and yes yessiree this includes cancer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe year 2012 CERN announced that there are things faster than light.
The year 2011 I anounced that sound is faster than light. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=living-in-a-quantum-world
bete noir -- Yes, you can bet on that one. I disclose the cure for cancer to the fire department and the fact that trees are constantly on fire to health authority!
Do you get the feeling that Bruce does not comprehend what a bete noir is?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRE: The evolutionary shellgame of Reductionism: From artificial intelligence (AI) theories to biologism, geneticism, and memeism of the 20th century!? -- Or, The big promises of computational informatics and digital simulation of the Human Brain in Chassis!?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst do no harm: and here is a universal science-philosophy motto: A grand theory or claim requires a grand close scrutiny! And, it is in resonance with the Socratic dictum: An unexamined life [or project] is not worth living [or pursuing] -- anywhere on Earth!?
I thought the above Markram proposal is a most fantastic PR* article -- for the Human Brain Project (HBP) -- that I have ever read (in print) in my entire scientific intellectual life! -- [*PR: public relation, as it clearly discloses that the HBP is one of the 6 projects competing for a hefty research prize award (€1 billion to be appropriated over a 10-year period) that is to be announced by the EU research grant committee in February 2013!]
Unfortunately with his apparently ineptitude in systems biology, biotechnology, and the distinctive reductionist history of AI R&D issues and its divergence from the actual bio-naturalism and genetics (especially since the biotech revolution since the 1980s), Henry Markram seems to be proposing a HBP that is attempting to reenact the pseudoscientific fantasy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein -- only in this version of Markram's imagination and animation in biologism*, geneticism** and AI theories*** -- in which Markram has had role-played the ambitious Dr. Frankenstein himself: the modern psychiatrist-trained, now turned neuro-reductionist, who has indeed been inspired and aspiring to assemble and simulate a Human Brain en masse, by boldly adopting and applying the biologically-flawed theories of biologism and geneticism or neo-Darwinist reductionism into the concurrent AI processing theories of the 20th century past!
[*Biologism: see E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) in which he anthropomorphizes ants as neurons in our brain; **geneticism: see Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976) in which he reduces behaviorism to our genes and memes in our brain; and ***AI theories: see Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works (1997) in which he reduces cognition to our computational informatics, in alignment with the Dawkinsean pseudo-genetics, pseudo-linguistics, or memetics (see geneticism above).]
Also, this is a most ambitious proposal of attempting to simulate or model the Human Brain in silico since the heyday of the automaton industry! (To be continued below)
RE: The evolutionary shellgame of Reductionism! (Continued from above)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile without conducting any parallel, controlled, in vitro, and/or in vivo studies, along and at each level of the neuro-modeling: molecular; cellular; circuitry or networks in substantia and chemistry, including synapses; neurotransmitters; hormones; etc -- and not merely animations running on electricity -- the HBP is doomed to repeat the fallacy of evolutionary reductionism in biology (ie, biologism, geneticism, memeism or sociobiologism) and to repeat the Dawkinsean pseudoscientific fantasy or frivolous metaphor of "the whirlwind [or God] assembling of a Boeing [or Airbus] in the junkyard" anti-theism wasting syndrome or scientism (see Dawkins 2006 book The God Delusion; paraphrased above), no matter "how advanced the future of computing power will be" (paraphrased Markram above)!
Indeed: "It's time to change the way we study the brain" (paraphrased above) by not insisting -- or continuing to reduce -- our brain to the AI processor hypothesis and synthesis fallacy; as one that can be -- readily and digitally -- simulated by a supercomputer!
Whereas from a practical science-philosophy viewpoint: A grand theory or claim shall always be substantiated by grand evidence; and from a naturalist biological or holistic perspective: The global working of our brain or mind* will never be reductively replicated or simulated by the exa-scale power or simulation/animation programming of any future supercomputers! -- [*The global mind: see my 2006 book Gods, Genes, Conscience (link below) especially Chapter 15: The Universal Theory of Mind.]
Good luck to Markram, anyway*! -- [*It seems that the HBP as proposed above, has not been critically nor scientifically vetted by any qualified interdisciplinary reviewers, at all: especially vetted for its feasibility, practicality, and functionality evaluation and test issues; and not be seduced by the AI cognitive neuro-reductionist fantasy or grandiosity of the HBP; in full accordance with the standard biomedical R&D protocols, as I duly analyzed above!?]
Best wishes, Mong 6/1/12usct4:32p; practical science-philosophy critic; author "Decoding Scientism" and "Consciousness & the Subconscious" (works in progress since July 2007), "Gods, Genes, Conscience" (iUniverse; 2006 -- http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000034974/GODS-GENES-CONSCIENCE.aspx ) and "Gods, Genes, Conscience: Global Dialogues Now" (blogging avidly since 2006 -- http://www2.blogger.com/profile/18303146609950569778 ).
I'm not very positive about simulations in general. However, in this case it may offer some new insights in the working of the brain. It would be interesting to know if the working of the brain has a quantum mechanical aspect (in particular superposition). Should this be the case, I expect that it will not be possible (or at least extremely difficult) to simulate a brain using a digital computer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd be curious to know what Brian can tell us about Time Cube.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice work but I'd take this with a grain of salt. Don't forget these are the same people who once believed only 10-15% of the brain was used(the gray matter) and the packing peanuts(the white matter) as one doctor described them was just there to support the gray matter(neurons) where the work was done. Only recently have they final admitted that the gray and white matter are both part of what we called "the mind".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's how my brain responded to the article. The author stated: "In Europe alone, brain diseases affect 180 million people, or roughly one in three -- a number that is set to grow as the population ages." My first reaction: that can't be true. My second reaction: that's an extravagant claim -- what can he possibly mean? That one in three Europeans is mentally ill? That can't be true. That one in three Europeans will eventually get a degenerative brain disease such as Alzheimers? That could be true, but he can't mean that, because he said the number would grow as the population ages. No, he's saying that one in three Europeans has a brain disease right now. Well, that's almost certainly false. So, the way my brain works, I wonder what else in the article is false.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShould't a model of a mouse brain be done first? Sound like a big step to go straight to a human brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis kind of sounds like building a model of all the roads and highways in the country, and thinking that will tell us what everybody is watching on television.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suggest before we try to simulate a system with billions of cells, we may want to simulate just one neuron with all its memories, decisions, processing power, inputs and outputs. If that seems to work, simulate two neurons working together. And if that works, try to simulate the nervous system of C. Elegans, the nematode, with 302 neurons. If that works, perhaps make the jump to a truly massive nervous system, like a fruit fly, with 100,000 neurons and a billion synapses.
think of the possibilities an advancement like this could offer us, there's ideas about something called "uploading", ie, uploading a direct schemata of your brain onto a computer processor, imagine, ur digital self in a machine, a self that can be immortal!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthink of the possibilities an advancement like this could offer us, there's ideas about something called "uploading", ie, uploading a direct schemata of your brain onto a computer processor, imagine, ur digital self in a machine, a self that can be immortal!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"This 'virtual brain' will run on supercomputers and incorporate all the data that neuroscience has generated to date."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo actually, it won't