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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Human Brain Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Brain Project. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Are we living in the age of the brain?

Understanding the brain won’t be done simply by mapping it down to the last synapse

By Philip Ball
Prospect Magazine
Originally published December 22 2014

Here is an excerpt:

Resolution of conflicting mental signals is certainly not ignored by cognitive scientists or psychologists, but there seems often to be a disjuncture between the neuroscientific model of the brain as a problem-solving network and the actual experience of the brain as a medley, even a bedlam, of imperatives and impulses. Sigmund Freud may have been wrong in seeking to present his psychoanalytic theory as a kind of science, but he was surely right to present the mind in terms of conflict rather than unity. One thing we do know about the brain is that it is not just a very large network of neurons, but is both very diverse (there are many different types of neuron, as well as non-neuronal cells called glia) and highly modular (different parts perform different, specialized roles). Mapping this architecture is an important goal, and there are some deeply impressive techniques for doing that. But the risk is that this is like trying to understand human culture using Google Earth—or rather, cultures, for there is just a single geography but plenty of conflicts, compromises and confusion going on within it.

None of this would be disputed by neuroscientists. But it perhaps highlights the distinctions between an understanding of the brain and an understanding of the mind. The implication seems to be that it is hard to develop one while you’re working on the other.

The entire article is here.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Bringing a Virtual Brain to Life

By Tim Requarth
The New York Times
Originally published March 18, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

In 2009, Dr. Markram conceived of the Human Brain Project, a sprawling and controversial initiative of more than 150 institutions around the world that he hopes will bring scientists together to realize his dream.
      
In January, the European Union raised the stakes by awarding the project a 10-year grant of up to $1.3 billion — an unheard-of sum in neuroscience.
      
“A meticulous virtual copy of the human brain,” Dr. Markram wrote in Scientific American, “would enable basic research on brain cells and circuits or computer-based drug trials.”
      
An equally ambitious “big brain” idea is in the works in the United States: The Obama administration is expected to propose its own project, with up to $3 billion allocated over a decade to develop technologies to track the electrical activity of every neuron in the brain.
      
But just as many obstacles stand in the way of the American project, a number of scientists have expressed serious reservations about Dr. Markram’s project.
      
Some say we don’t know enough about the brain to simulate it on a supercomputer. And even if we did, these critics ask, what would be the value of building such a complicated “virtual brain”?

(cut)

“It’s not like the Human Genome Project, where you just have to read out a few billion base pairs and you’re done,” said Peter Dayan, a neuroscientist at University College London. “For the human brain, what would you need to know to build a simulation? That’s a huge research question, and it has to do with what’s important to know about the brain.”
      
And Haim Sompolinsky, a neuroscientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said: “The rhetoric is that in a decade they will be able to reverse-engineer the human brain in computers. This is fantasy. Nothing will come close to it in a decade.”