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A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed.<\/strong><\/p>\n Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain.<\/p>\n He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.<\/p>\n Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Shared fabric\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n The Blue Brain project was launched in 2005 and aims to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from laboratory data.<\/p>\n In particular, his team has focused on the neocortical column \u2014 repetitive units of the mammalian brain known as the neocortex.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a new brain,\u201d he explained. \u201cThe mammals needed it because they had to cope with parenthood, social interactions complex cognitive functions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was so successful an evolution from mouse to man it expanded about a thousand fold in terms of the numbers of units to produce this almost frightening organ.\u201d<\/p>\n And that evolution continues, he said. \u201cIt is evolving at an enormous speed.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the last 15 years, Professor Markram and his team have picked apart the structure of the neocortical column.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like going and cataloguing a bit of the rainforest \u2014 how may trees does it have, what shape are the trees, how many of each type of tree do we have, what is the position of the trees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it is a bit more than cataloguing because you have to describe and discover all the rules of communication, the rules of connectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n The project now has a software model of \u201ctens of thousands\u201d of neurons \u2014 each one of which is different \u2014 which has allowed them to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column.<\/p>\n Although each neuron is unique, the team has found the patterns of circuitry in different brains have common patterns.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though your brain may be smaller, bigger, may have different morphologies of neurons \u2014 we do actually share the same fabric,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we think this is species specific, which could explain why we can\u2019t communicate across species.\u201d<\/p>\n World view<\/strong><\/p>\n To make the model come alive, the team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a supercomputer.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you need ten thousand laptops.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n\n
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The team are trying to reverse engineer the brain<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n