EU Human Brain Project
The EU Human Brain Project is an Artificial Brain Project organized by the EU FET Program.
- Context:
- It is intended to better understand Neurological Disorders and the effects of drugs on the Human Brain.
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- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Simulation Model.
References
2013
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Brain_Project
- The Human Brain Project is a research project which aim is to stimulate (with supercomputers) and better understand the human brain.
It is directed by the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and co-directed by Heidelberg University, the University Hospital of Lausanne and the University of Lausanne.
It is supported by the European Union as an 'FET Flagship' project.
- The Human Brain Project is a research project which aim is to stimulate (with supercomputers) and better understand the human brain.
- http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/vision.html
- In short, the goal of the Human Brain Project is to build a completely new ICT infrastructure for future neuroscience, future medicine and future computing that will catalyse a global collaborative effort to understand the human brain and its diseases and ultimately to emulate its computational capabilities.
- http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/in_brief.html
- In neuroscience, the HBP will lead a global collaborative effort to unify our understanding of the structure and function of the human brain. The project will develop novel ICT capabilities making it possible to systematically integrate all available data and knowledge in unifying models of the brain, identifying and filling the gaps and reconciling conflicts. In this way, it will bring together historically distinct bottom-up and top-down approaches, allowing researchers to systematically trace the complex chains of causation leading from genes to cognition. The HBP will put Europe in a position where it can lead the effort to address this grand challenge.
In medicine, the HBP will enable the first objective classifications of brain disease. The project will develop ICT tools that allow researchers to analyse clinical data for the full range of psychiatric and neurological diseases, to build models of brain disease and ultimately to explore their root causes in simulation. This will allow researchers to systematically map diseases, provide personalised early diagnosis and treatment, trace mechanisms of causation, and screen drugs for effectiveness and side-effects before expensive animal testing and human trials. These innovations will strengthen the competitive position of European pharmaceutical companies, reduce the escalating burden of brain disease for national health services and contribute to the welfare of tens of millions of patients and their families.
In computing, the HBP will develop radically new computing technologies.
The needs of the project will drive development of technology for remotely accessible interactive exascale supercomputing and for multi-scale simulations. Knowledge of the brain will lead to highly scalable and configurable neuromorphic hardware, incorporating principles of brain computation and cognition. The new technologies will turn supercomputers into interactive instruments for data-intensive applications, allow the development of intelligent computing and communications devices, provide new solutions to critical challenges in power consumption, reliability and programmability and drive a paradigm shift for next-generation computing.
- In neuroscience, the HBP will lead a global collaborative effort to unify our understanding of the structure and function of the human brain. The project will develop novel ICT capabilities making it possible to systematically integrate all available data and knowledge in unifying models of the brain, identifying and filling the gaps and reconciling conflicts. In this way, it will bring together historically distinct bottom-up and top-down approaches, allowing researchers to systematically trace the complex chains of causation leading from genes to cognition. The HBP will put Europe in a position where it can lead the effort to address this grand challenge.
2012
- (Markram, 2012) ⇒ Henry Markram. (2012). “The Human Brain Project.” In: Scientific American, 306. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0612-50.
- ABSTRACT: Reductionist biology — examining individual brain parts, neural circuits and molecules — has brought us a long way, but it alone cannot explain the workings of the human brain, an information processor within our skull that is perhaps unparalleled anywhere in the universe. We must construct as well as reduce and build as well as dissect. To do that, we need a new paradigm that combines both analysis and synthesis. The father of reductionism, French philosopher René Descartes, wrote about the need to investigate the parts and then reassemble them to re-create the whole.
Putting things together to devise a complete simulation of the human brain is the goal of an undertaking that intends to construct a fantastic new scientific instrument. Nothing quite like it exists yet, but we have begun building it. One way to think of this instrument is as the most powerful flight simulator ever built — only rather than simulating flight through open air, it will simulate a voyage through the brain. This “virtual brain” will run on supercomputers and incorporate all the data that neuroscience has generated to date.
- ABSTRACT: Reductionist biology — examining individual brain parts, neural circuits and molecules — has brought us a long way, but it alone cannot explain the workings of the human brain, an information processor within our skull that is perhaps unparalleled anywhere in the universe. We must construct as well as reduce and build as well as dissect. To do that, we need a new paradigm that combines both analysis and synthesis. The father of reductionism, French philosopher René Descartes, wrote about the need to investigate the parts and then reassemble them to re-create the whole.