Wednesday 17 June 2015

Blue brain - The man made mammalian brain

Blue brain " -The name of the world's first virtual brain. That means a machine that can function as human brain. The goal is to create an artificial brain that can think, response, take decision, and keep anything in memory. 


No one has ever understood the complexity of human brain. It is much more complicated than any circuit existing. So, the question may arise "Is it really possible to create a human brain?" The answer is "Yes". Technology makes it possible.

Starting from very beginning, Alan Turing (1912–1954) started off by wanting to “Build The Brain” & ended up with a computer! And in the 60 years that have followed, computation speed has gone from 1 floating point operation per second (FLOPS) to over 250 trillion Flops. In order to take this vision further, On 1st July 2005, the Brain Mind Institute (BMI, at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and IBM (International Business Machines) launched the Blue Brain Project - 1. Using the enormous computing power of IBM’s prototype Blue Gene/L Super-Computer2, They decided to simulate the brains of mammals with a high level of biological accuracy. And, ultimately, to study the steps involved in the emergence of biological intelligence. Henry Markram, The Founder of Blue Brain Project is considered as "Father of Blue Brain Project".


Project "Blue Brain", is an attempt to create a Synthetic Brain by Reverse-Engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level (Reverse-Engineering is a technique in which a structure is explored from its whole to parts approach i.e. Top -> Bottom Approach.)

The brain builds its own version of the universe. And it projects this version like a bubble all around it. It uses the things around us and compares it to the perception bubble. e.g. Our brain is not able to take a perception of the moon which is miles away. It just takes what it gets from its actual position. And that is why our brain sees the moon as a white-small-circle only!

The result of a long term Evolution. It took 13.7 billion years to evolve a human brain which we have today from the chimps. The reason for this evolution is the human needs like eating, protecting, living socially, etc.

If we zoom into the surface of a human brain, we can see that it is made up of billions of modules each of which can be considered as a G5 Processor. We can also see it as a massive piano. Keys of which can be replaced by these many modules. This theory admits that if we want to make a complete virtual brain in our labs, We need to have millions of laptops each of which will represent a neuron of the brain!

" This gives us a Technical Hint! "

Synapse
It is found that the neurons are connected with each other to communicate. And the position where neurons interact with each other through some kind of chemical connection is known as Synapse. there are millions of synapses in human brain which are responsible for communication between neurons. The communication is done in form of electrical signals. Thus the synapses form a network or a circuit of the brain. Neither of the neuron of a person is same as any other neuron of himself or any other person on the Earth.

They have confidential algorithms which work on supercomputer to compute the exact position of each neuron in a brain.

Advantages :
  1. Understand and cure mental disorders
  2. No need to use animals to test medicines
  3. Artificial intelligence will reach to a new level
  4. Many of the devices will go automated, as they will be able to think
They have already created a cellular Rat-Brain with 100 mesocircuits totaling to a 100 million cells!
By 2024, a cellular human, Equivalent to 1000 Rat-Brains totalling a 100 billion cells would be in the press already.

If possible, this would be the first virtual human brain of the world. 
Isn't it cool!!!

- Vish

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