To help solve this mystery, June 26, 2005, IBM in collaboration with the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne), announced the most ambitious project to date for brain research and rightly called the Blue Brain Project. The project aims to create a detailed model of the circuits of the neocortex -. Larger and more complex human brain in part by expanding the project to model other areas of the brain, scientists hope to build a computer model based on accurate throughout the brain. The first phase of Blue Brain Project, which consists of a software replica of the neocortex (almost 85% of the total mass of the brain), should take two to three years. The next phase of the project that includes simulation of the entire brain will take at least a decade.
The project Blue Brain supercomputer use IBM eServer Blue Gene. Blue Gene was recently ranked as the fastest supercomputer in the world. It has a top speed of about 22.8 teraflops, which means that theoretically can spit 22,800,000,000,000 floating-point operations per second. Some computer simulations requires a full day of research and calculations can be done in a matter of seconds on Blue Gene. In a real brain, a column of the neocortex is a cylindrical element about a third of a millimeter in diameter and three millimeters in length, containing about 10,000 nerve cells. These are the columns that form the famous "gray matter". EPFL's contribution to the Blue Brain project is the creation of a numerical description of how the columns behave. The Blue Gene supercomputer is enough independent processors for each be programmed to simulate a single neuron in a column.
The Blue Gene architecture has 8000 processors and the mapping of one or two simulated brain neurons to each processor, the computer will become a copy of 10 000 silicon neurons. Then the scientists will connect them with the rules they have developed about how the brain works. The result will be a full model of 10,000 neurons jabbering back and simulation 1000 times larger than any similar model to date. Biologists and computer scientists will work together to connect the artificial nerve cells in a way that imitates nature. They will do this by assigning the electrical properties of them and tell them how to communicate with them and how they must change their connections with each other according to their activity.
After the first phase of Blue Brain project is completed, scientists will be able to study the functions of the neocortex in the learning of language and complex thought. When the second phase is completed and the whole brain has been modeled, it will also shed light on other internal processes such as perception, memory and senses. Moreover, by running accurate simulations of brain processes, scientists will be able to investigate questions about psychiatric disorders and how they occur, researchers believe that autism, schizophrenia, depression and other disorders mental circuits are caused by defective or dysfunctional in the brain.
Researchers around the world are differing opinions on what the researchers hope to achieve with this project. Some people do not realize the severity of proejct and feel on top of the computer mapping of the brain is negligible. Some researchers, such as Roger Penrose of Oxford University, argue that the brain does not work the same way as a computer, so any type of simulation, which is built in digital architecture and the use of traditional programming techniques surely fail. Henry Markram, Director Brain Mind Institute, EPFL and Director of the side of the project, stresses that the formal objective of Blue Brain is to build an artificial intelligence system, such as neural networks, but to make a computer simulation model of the brain human.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar