Blue Brain

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Blue Brain is a project to begin the construction of a simulated brain. The aim is not the creation of artificial intelligence, but rather the detailed study of the brain's structure. Started in May 2005, the project is a collaboration between IBM and Henry Markram's Brain and Mind Institute at the École Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The initial goal of the project is the simulation of a neocortical column, which can be considered the smallest functional unit of the neocortex (the part of the brain thought to be responsible for higher functions such as conscious thought). Such a column is about 2 mm tall, has a diameter of 0.5 mm and contains about 60,000 neurons in humans; the simulation will focus on rat neocortical columns, which are very similar in structure but contain only 10,000 neurons (and 10⁸ synapses). Over the last 10 years, Markram has mapped the types of neurons and their connections in such a column.

The project will use a Blue Gene supercomputer, running as simulating software the MPI-based Neocortical Simulator (NCS) developed by Phil Goodman, to be combined with Michael Hines's NEURON software. The simulation will not consist of a mere artificial neural network, but will involve much more biologically realistic models of neurons.

It is estimated that construction of a simulated neocortical column will take about 2 years; the results of the simulation will be experimentally tested against biological columns.

After that, the project will develop in two different directions:

construction of a simulation on the molecular level, which is desirable since it allows to study effects of gene expression
simplification of the column simulation to allow for parallel simulation of large numbers of connected columns, with the grand goal of simulating a whole neocortex (which in humans consists of about 1 million cortical columns)