Lausanne, Switzerland. March 3, 2008 - Composed of 2,000 IBM microchips stacked in repeating rows that can handle 22.8 trillion operations per second, the IBM Blue Brain supercomputer is designed to model a complete rat brain and download it into a robotic rat so that it can develop like a real rat--one with a "mind of its own."
Each microchip inside the Blue Brain has been programmed to act just like a real neuron in a real brain. Henry Markram, the director of the Blue Brain project and neuroscientist at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, wants to use the supercomputer to simulate what the brain of the robotic rat experiences and generate a movie of its reality rooted in the details of its brain.
Each microchip inside the Blue Brain has been programmed to act just like a real neuron in a real brain. Henry Markram, the director of the Blue Brain project and neuroscientist at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, wants to use the supercomputer to simulate what the brain of the robotic rat experiences and generate a movie of its reality rooted in the details of its brain.
Markram hopes that the model of the rat brain can be completed within two years. From this research, Markram and his team will be able to move onto simulating more complex brains, eventually leading to an artificial human brain.
Image Courtesy of BBP/EPFL
1 comment:
Check it out, homeboy: http://www.alleninstitute.org/content/projects.htm
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