Scientists threaten to boycott €1.2bn Human Brain Project

Researchers say European commission-funded initiative to simulate human brain suffers from 'substantial failures'.

Many researchers refused to join on the grounds that it was too premature to at-tempt a simulation of the entire human brain.Photograph:Sebastian Kaulitzki / Alamy

The world's largest project to unravel the mysteries of the human brain has been thrown into crisis with more than 100 leading researchers threatening to boycott the effort amid accusations of mismanagement and fears that it is doomed to failure.

The European commission launched the €1.2bn (£950m) Human Brain Project (HBP) last year with the ambitious goal of turning the latest knowledge in neuro-science into a supercomputer simulation of the human brain.More than 80 European and international research institutions signed up to the 10-year project.

But it proved controversial from the start. Many researchers refused to join on the grounds that it was far too premature to attempt a simulation of the entire human brain in a computer. Now some claim the project is taking the wrong approach, wastes money and risks a backlash against neuroscience if it fails to deliver.

In an open letter to the European commission on Monday, more than 130 leaders of scientific groups around the world,including researchers at Oxford, Cambridge, Edin-burgh and UCL,warn they will boycott the project and urge others to join them unless major changes are made to the initiative.

The researchers urge EC officials who are now reviewing the plans to take a hard look at the science and management before deciding on whether to renew its fun-ding. They believe the review, which is due to conclude at the end of the summer, will find "substantial failures" in the project's governance, flexibility and openness.

Central to the latest controversy are recent changes made by Henry Markram, head of the Human Brain Project at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne. The changes sidelined cognitive scientists who study high-level brain functions, such as thought and behaviour. Without them,the brain simulation will be built from the bot. tom up,drawing on more fundamental science, such as studies of individual neurons. The brain, the most complex object known, has some 86bn neurons and 100tn connections.

"The main apparent goal of building the capacity to construct a larger-scale simulation of the human brain is radically premature," Peter Dayan, director of the computational neuroscience unit at UCL, told the Guardian.

"We are left with a project that can't but fail from a scientific perspective. It is a waste of money, it will suck out funds from valuable neuroscience research, and would leave the public, who fund this work, justifiably upset," he said.

Europe's decision to approve the HBP spurred US scientists to propose a major pro-ject of their own. The US Brain Initiative aims to map the activity of the human brain and could win $3bn (£1.75bn) in funding over 10 years.

Alexandre Pouget, a signatory of the letter at Geneva University, said that while si-mulations were valuable, they would not be enough to explain how the brain works.

"There is a danger that Europe thinks it is investing in a big neuroscience project here, but it's not. It's an IT project," he said. "They need to widen the scope and take advantage of the expertise we have in neuroscience. It's not too late. We can fix it. It's up to Europe to make the right decision."

But Markram staunchly defends the project, arguing that it was always about develo-ping technology rather than basic neuroscience.He said its goal was not to churn out more of the data that neuroscientists already produce, but to develop new tools to make sense of the vast data sets coming out of brain sciences.

"The rationale of the Human Brain Project is a plan for data: what do we do with all this data? This is a very exciting ICT project that will bring completely new tools and capabilities to all of neuroscience," he said. "It is not a general neuroscience funding source for more of the same research."

Richard Frackowiak, director of clinical neuroscience at the University Hospital of Lausanne, and co-leader of a strand of the Human Brain Project focusing on "future medicine",said that many of the complaints were "irrational sniping" from scientists who were ill-informed, or wanted the funds to pursue their own research agendas. He said that simulations of the brain represented a long-needed "paradigm shift" in neuroscience.

Sir Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at the University of London, who is not one of the signatories to the letter, said: "It's important that the review should be thorough and, if necessary, critical. But it would be unfortunate if this high-profile project were to be abandoned. There's enough flexibility in the plans to allow the project to be refocused and re-energised.

"The most important thing is that the goals should be realistic. If they promise the politicians cures for dementia or miraculous breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, but don't really deliver them, it might have a negative impact on the whole funding of neuroscience in the future – and that would be a disaster.".

Opeen message to the European Commission concerning the Human Brain Project

Summary: Neuroscience advances our understanding of normal and pathological brain function,offering potentially enormous benefits to society. It is, therefore, critical to Europe. The Human Brain Project (HBP),sponsored by the European Commission (EC), was meant to forward this mission. However, due in great part to its narrow fo-cus, it has been highly controversial and divisive within the European neuroscience community and even within the consortium, resulting in on-going losses of members. The HBP is now scheduled for review and we wish to draw the attention of the EC to these problems. We believe the HBP is not a well conceived or implemented project and that it is ill suited to be the centerpiece of European neuroscience. We are parti-cularly concerned about the plan to tie a substantial portion European member states’ neuroscience funding to the HBP through so-called ‘part-nering projects’. We call for the EC to go beyond the strict requirements of the upcoming review, to de-mand transparency and accountability and, if necessary, change the structure of the HBP’s governance and supervision to correct their shortcomings. Failing that we call for the EC to redirect the HBP funding to smaller investigator-driven neuroscience grants. We stand fully behind a strong and united European neuroscience strategy and we pledge not to seek funding through HBP partnering projects that would compromise that mission.

Koska nämä tiedot saattavat jonkin poliittisen päätöksen vuoksi kadota, pannaan näkyviin tänne:

Open message to the European Commissionconcerning the Human Brain Project

Sign the letter

Open message to the European Commission concerning the Human Brain Project

July 7, 2014

We the undersigned members of the European neuroscience community are writing to express our concern with the course of the Human Brain Project (HBP).The HBP, and its cousin the U.S.BRAIN Initiative, have the noble goal of making major advan- ces in our understanding of both normal and pathological brain function. Given the potentially enormous benefits to society that would be gained from achieving this goal, it deserves a significant collective investment of our societies’ resources.

However, the HBP has been controversial and divisive within the European neuro-science community from the beginning.Many laboratories refused to join the project when it was first submitted because of its focus on an overly narrow approach, leading to a significant risk that it would fail to meet its goals. Further attrition of members during the ramp-up phase added to this narrowing. 

In June, a Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) for the second round of funding for the HBP was submitted. This, unfortunately,reflected an even further narrowing of goals and funding allocation,including the removal of an entire neuroscience subpro- ject and the consequent deletion of 18 additional laboratories,as well as further with-drawals and the resignation of one member of the internal scientific advisory board.

A formal review of the HBP is now scheduled to evaluate the success of the project’s ramp-up phase and the plan for the next phase. At stake is funding on the order of 50 M€ per year European Commission for the “core project” and 50M€ in “partnering projects” provided largely by the European member states’ funding bodies.

In this context, we wish to express the view that the HBP is not on course and that the European Commission must take a very careful look at both the science and the management of the HBP before it is renewed. We strongly question whether the goals and implementation of the HBP are adequate to form the nucleus of the collaborative effort in Europe that will further our understanding of the brain.

It is stated that the review must address the excellence,impact as well as the quality and efficiency of implementation. We believe that a review will show that there are substantial failures to meet these criteria, especially concerning the quality of the go-vernance demonstrated and the lack of flexibility and openness of the consortium. 

In order to carry out the upcoming review in the most transparent and accountable manner possible, we hold that it should meet the following criteria:

• The panel should be composed of highly regarded members of the scientific community whose views reflect the diversity of approaches within neuroscience.
• The review process should be transparent: review panel members identities should be disclosed and the goals, procedures and output of the review process should be public.
  
• The panel should be independent: the members of the panel should not be in-volved in the development of,advocacy for,or governance of the HBP;they should provide a signed disclosure of any significant funding or scientific relationships to the HBP.
• The EC must by regulation evaluate if the HBP is meeting the core criteria of the FET Flagship Project, including scientific excellence, impact and quality of imple-mentation. We call attention to concerns raised by the sparse community support and systematic loss of HBP partners that appear highly relevant to the FET criteria of:
• 
  
  • Extent to which the consortium enables fostering complementarities, exploiting synergies, and enhancing the overall outcome of regional, national, European and international research programmes.
  • Quality of the proposed governance and management structure.
  • Openness and flexibility of the consortium.
• Based on this review, the panel should make binding recommendations concer-ning the continuation of the HBP as a whole as well as continuation of individual subprojects, including the allocation of resources across subprojects and the possible creation of new subprojects.
• The panel should be tasked and empowered to create a transparent process for the formulation of the calls for partnering projects and the review of applications for those calls, such that these reflect community input, are coordinated with the core but are independent of the core administration.
• One or more members of the panel should continue to serve as the core of an external steering committee for the period of the funding under review. These continuing members would need to be fully independent of the project (i.e. receiving no funding).
  

In the case that the review is not able to secure these objectives, we call for the European Commission and Member States to reallocate the funding currently alloca-ted to the HBP core and partnering projects to broad neuroscience-directed funding to meet the original goals of the HBP - understanding brain function and its effect on society. We strongly support the mechanism of individual investigator-driven grants as a means to provide a much needed investment in European neuroscience research. The European Research Council would provide a well-proven mechanism for allocating such funds.

In the event that the European Commission is unable to adopt these recommenda-tions, we, the undersigned, pledge not to apply for HBP partnering projects and will urge our colleagues to join us in this commitment.

1. Moshe Abeles. Bar-Ilan University. Israel.
2. Ad Aertsen. University of Freiburg. Germany.
3. Silvia Arber. FMI. Switzerland.
4. Philippe Ascher. University of Paris. France.
5. Francesco Battaglia. Radboud Universiteit. Netherlands.
6. Daphne Bavelier, University of Geneva. Switzerland.
7. Heinz Beck. University of Bonn. Germany.
8. James Bednar. University of Edinburgh. UK.
9. Tim Behrens. Oxford University. UK.
10. Suliann Ben Hamed. ISC Lyon. France.
11. Benedikt Berninger. University Medical Center Mainz. Germany.
12. Hugues Berry. INRIA. France.
13. Matthias Bethge. University of Tuebingen. Germany.
14. Timothy Bliss. MRC. UK.
15. Vincent Bonin. NERF. Belgium.
16. Jan Born. University of Tübingen. Germany.
17. Axel Borst. MPI. Germany.
18. Gerard Borst. Erasmus MC Rotterdam. Netherlands.
19. Michael Brecht. BCCN.Germany.
20. Nils Brose. MPI. Germany.
21. Jo Bury. VIB. Belgium.
22. Matteo Carandini. UCL. UK.
23. Alan Carleton. University of Geneva. Switzerland.
24. Pico Caroni. FMI. Switzerland. 
25. Frederic Chavane. CNRS Marseille. France.
26. Leonardo Chelazzi. University of Verona. Italy.
27. Eugenia Chiappe. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
28. Albert Compte. IDIBAPS Barcelona. Spain.
29. Rui Costa. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
30. Peter Dayan. University College of London. UK.
31. Alexandre Dayer. University of Geneva. Switzerland.
32. Gonzalo de Polavieja. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
33. Chris de Zeeuw. Erasmus MC, Rotterdam. Netherlands.
34. Sophie Deneve. ENS. France.
35. Winfried Denk. MPIMR Heidelberg. Germany.
36. Mathew Diamond. SISSA. Italy.
37. David DiGregorio. Institut Pasteur. France.
38. Ray Dolan. UCL. UK. 
39. Rodney Douglas. ETH. Switzerland.
40. Andreas Draguhn. University of Heidelberg. Germany.
41. Jean Rene Duhamel. ISC Lyon. France
42. Thomas Euler. University of Tubingen. Germany.
43. Karl Farrow. NERF. Belgium.
44. Julia Fischer. Leibniz Institut fur Primatentforschung. Germany.
45. Jozsef Fiser. CEU. Hungary.
46. Tamar Flash. Weizmann Institute. Israel.
47. Eckhard Friauf. University of Kaiserslautern. Germany.
48. Rainer Friedrich. FMI. Switzerland.
49. Pascal Fries. ESI and MPI. Germany.
50. Chris Frith. UCL. London.
51. Vittorio Gallese. University of Parma. Italy.
52. Theo Geisel. MPI. Germany.
53. Martin Giese. University of Tübingen. Germany.
54. David Golomb, Ben-Gurion University, Israel.
55. Lyle Graham. CNRS, U Paris Descartes. France.
56. Boris Gutkin. ENS. France.
57. Helmut Haas. University of Dusseldorf. Germany.
58. Sebastian Haesler. NERF. Belgium.
59. Richard Hahnloser. ETH. Switzerland.
60. David Hansel. University of Paris. France.
61. Riitta Hari. Aalto University. Finland.
62. Ken Harris. UCL. UK.
63. Michael Hausser. UCL. UK.
64. Fritjof Helmchen. University of Zurich. Switzerland.
65. Moritz Helmstaedter. MPI. Germany.
66. Matthias Hennig. University of Edinburgh. UK.
67. Sonja Hofer. University of Basel. Switzerland.
68. Klaus-Peter Hoffmann. Ruhr University Bochum. Germany.
69. Daniel Huber. University of Geneva. Switzerland.
70. Denis Jabaudon. University of Geneva. Switzerland.
71. Reinhard Jahn. MPIMR. Germany.
72. Peter Janssen. KU Leuven. Belgium.
73. Sebastian Jessberger. University of Zurich. Switzerland.
74. Adam Kampff. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
75. Jason Kerr. Caesar. Germany.
76. Jozsef Kiss. University of Geneva. Switzerland.
77. Fabian Kloosterman. NERF. Belgium.
78. Etienne Koechlin. ENS. France.
79. Arvind Kumar. University of Freiburg. Germany.
80. Peter Latham. UCL. UK.
81. Gilles Laurent. MPI Frankfurt. Germany.
82. Mate Lengyel. Cambridge University. UK.
83. Juan Lerma Gomez. Instituto de Neurociencias Alicante. Spain.
84. Susana Lima. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
85. Nikos Logothetis. MPI Tübingen. Germany.
86. Matthieu Louis. CRG. Spain.
87. Heiko Luhmann. University Medical Center Mainz. Germany.
88. Giuseppe Luppino. University of Parma. Italy.
89. Andreas Luthi. FMI. Switzerland.
90. Christian Machens. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
91. Zachary Mainen. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
92. Rafael Malach. Weizmann Institute. Israel.
93. Miguel Maravall. Instituto de Neurociencias Alicante. Spain.
94. Troy Margrie. NIMR. UK.
95. Kevan Martin. ETH. Switzerland.
96. Guillaume Masson. CNRS Marseille. France.
97. Gero Miesenboeck. Oxford. UK.
98. Marta Moita. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
99. Edvard Moser. Kavli Institute. Norway.
100. May-Britt Moser. Kavli Institute. Norway.
101. Tom Mrsic-Flogel. University of Basel. Switzerland.
102. Andreas Neef. MPIMR. Germany.
103. Israel Nelken. Hebrew University. Israel.
104. Stephan Neuhauss. University of Zurich. Switzerland.
105. Andreas Nieder. University of Tübingen. Germany.
106. Hendrikje Nienborg. University of Tübingen. Germany.
107. Zoltan Nusser. Institute of Experimental Medicine. Hungary.
108. Guy Orban. University of Parma. Italy.
109. Christophe Pallier, CNRS-INSERM, Paris-Saclay, France
110. Stefano Panzeri. Italian Institute of Technology. Italy.
111. Rony Paz. Weizmann Institute. Israel.
112. Barak Pearlmutter. NUI Maynooth. Ireland.
113. Mathias Pessiglione. ICM. France.
114. Chris Petkov. Newcastle University. UK.
115. Leopoldo Petreanu. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
116. Alexandre Pouget. University of Geneva. Switzerland.
117. Martin Raff. UCL. UK.
118. Alfonso Renart. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
119. Giacomo Rizzolatti. Università di Parma. Italy.
120. David Robbe. INMED. France.
121. Botond Roska. FMI. Switzerland.
122. Stefan Rotter. University of Freiburg. Germany.
123. Nava Rubin. ICREA and DTIC, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Spain.
124. Simon Rumpel. IMP. Austria.
125. Matthew Rushworth. University of Oxford. UK.
126. Stefan Schaal. MPI. Germany.
127. Andreas Schaefer. NIMR UCL. UK
128. Peter Scheiffele. University of Basel. Switzerland.
129. Elad Schneidman. Weizmann Institute. Israel.
130. Jan Schnupp. University of Oxford. UK.
131. Bernhard Scholkopf. MPI Tübingen. Germany.
132. Erin Schuman. MPI Frankfurt. Germany.
133. Martin Schwab. University of Zurich. Switzerland.
134. Cornelius Schwarz. University of Tuebingen. Germany.
135. Sophie Schwartz.University of Geneva.Switzerland.
136. Peggy Series. University of Edinburgh. UK.
137. Noam Shemesh. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal.
138. Oren Shriki. Ben Gurion University. Israel.
139. Angus Silver. UCL. UK.
140. Angela Sirigu. ISC Lyon. France.
141. Haim Sompolinsky. Hebrew University. Israel. 
142. Walter Stuhmer. MPI. Germany.
143. German Sumbre. ENS, France.
144. Alexandre Thiele. Newcastle University. UK.
145. Peter Thier. University of Tübingen. Germany.
146. Simon Thorpe. CNRS Toulouse. France.
147. Alessandro Treves. SISSA. Italy.
148. Nachum Ulanovsky. Weizmann Institute. Israel.
149. Wim Vanduffel. KU Leuven. Belgium.
150. Rufin Vogels. KU Leuven. Belgium.
151. Patrik Vuilleumier. University of Geneva. Switzerland. 
152. Felix Wichmann. University of Tuebingen. Germany.
153. David Willshaw. University of Edinburgh.UK.
154. Fred Wolf. MPI Göttingen. Germany. 
155. Daniel Wolpert. Cambridge University. UK.
156. Emre Yaksi. NERF. Belgium.

The open letter was sent to the EC at 07/07/2014, 00:00. All signatures listed above were received prior to that time and so were included in the letter. The signatures below are listed by time of registration. 

157. Hugues Berry. INRIA. France
158. Aldo Faisal. Imperial College London. United Kingdom
159. Simon Schultz. Imperial College London. United Kingdom
160. Sofie Valk. MPI. Germany
161. Nick Franks. Imperial College. United Kingdom
162. Alex Gomez-Marin. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. Portugal
163. Michael Orger. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
164. Jean-Marc Fritschy. University of Zurich. Switzerland
165. Daniele Marinazzo. University of Gent. Belgium
166. Cyrille Rossant. UCL. United Kingdom
167. Jon Simons. University of Cambridge. United Kingdom
168. Srdjan Ostojic. ENS Paris. France
169. Wouter De Baene. Ghent University. Belgium
170. Maria Luisa Vasconcelos. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
171. Paul Chadderton. Imperial College London. United Kingdom
172. Bernd Sutor. University of Munich. Germany
173. Carlos Ribeiro. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
174. Konrad Kording. Northwestern University. United States
175. Jochen Staiger. University Medicine Goettinge. Germany
176. Jan Zimmermann. Maastricht University. Netherlands
177. Martina Wicklein. Imperial College London. United Kingdom
178. John van Opstal. Radboud University Nijmegen. Netherlands
179. Marc van Wanrooij. Radboud University Nijmegen. Netherlands
180. Tomas Ros. University of Geneva. Switzerland
181. Pierre-Alexandre Klein. Université catholique de Louvain. Belgium
182. Stefano Ferraina. Sapienza University . Italy
183. Robert Dickinson. Imperial College London. United Kingdom
184. Davide Zoccolan. SISSA. Italy
185. Georg Keller. Friedrich Miescher Institute. Switzerland
186. David Poeppel. Max-Planck-Institute, NYU. Germany
187. Claudio Luzzatti. Università di Milano-Bicocca. Italy
188. Natalie Sebanz. Central European University. Hungary
189. Federica Bianca Rosselli. SISSA. Italy
190. George Dimitriadis. Radboud University. Netherlands
191. Guenther Knoblich. Central European University. Hungary
192. Douglas Steele. University of Dundee. United Kingdom
193. Giorgio Gilestro. Imperial College London. United Kingdom
194. Sina Tafazoli. SISSA. Italy
195. Mark Humphries. University of Manchester. United Kingdom
196. Rainer Engelken. MPI DS. Germany
197. Roger Carpenter. University of Cambridge, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. United Kingdom
198. Ahmed El Hady. Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. Germany
199. Richard van Wezel. Radboud University Nijmegen. Netherlands
200. Stefan Treue. German Primate Center. Germany
201. Ivan Raikov. Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. Japan
202. Carl van Vreeswijk. CNRS. France
203. Dirk Kamin. MPI. Germany
204. Job van den Hurk. KU Leuven. Belgium
205. Christian Schnell. Cardiff University. United Kingdom
206. Yves Trotter. CNRS. France
207. Arnaud Delorme. CNRS. France
208. Megan Carey. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
209. Joseph Paton. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. Portugal
210. Benoît Girard. CNRS & UPMC. France
211. Egemen Konu. University of Nottingham. United Kingdom
212. Ronald Garduno. University of New Mexico. United States
213. Detlev Schild. Univ Göttingen. Germany
214. Henry Kennedy. INSERM. France
215. Umberto Castiello. University of Padova. Italy
216. Miguel Coelho. Movimento ao Serviço da Vida. Portugal
217. Raul Gainetdinov. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. Italy
218. Gagan Sidhu. N/A. Canada
219. Loren Looger. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia Farm Research Campus. United States
220. Marco Guenza. Università degli Studi di Torino. Italy
221. Hilary King. Retired ENAIP. United Kingdom
222. Thomas Kreuz. CNR. Italy
223. David Attwell. UCL. United Kingdom
224. Anna Kuppuswamy. UCL. United Kingdom
225. Chiara Begliomini. Dept. General Psychology, University of Padova. Italy
226. Vahid Esmaeili. SISSA. Italy
227. Alessandro Di Filippo. SISSA. Italy
228. Charles Capaday. Paris V. France
229. Laszlo Negyessy. Wigner RCP, Hungarian Academy of Sciences . Hungary
230. Timothy O'Leary. Brandeis University. United States
231. Sofia Soares. Champalimaud Centre for the Unkown. Portugal
232. Ana Vasconcelos. HSM-CHLN. Portugal
233. Rosa Garcia-Verdugo. MPI. Germany
234. Irini Skaliora. Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens. Greece
235. Gil Costa. Champalimaud Foundation. Portugal
236. Francois Genoud. University of Vienna. Austria
237. Aman Saleem. UCL. United Kingdom
238. Pascal Belin. Aix-Marseille University. France
239. Sara A Solla. Northwestern University. United States
240. Catherine Tallon-Baudry. Ecole Normale Supérieure. France
241. Catarina Seabra. University of Porto. Portugal
242. Jens Kremkow. State University of New York College of Optometry . United States
243. Hans-Peter Frey. Columbia University. United States
244. Michael Gutnick. The Hebrew University. Israel
245. Andras Lakatos. University of Cambridge. United Kingdom
246. Michael P. I. Becker. University of Muenster. Germany
247. Ulrich Leischner. Leibniz-Institute of Photonic Technologies. Germany
248. Dante Chialvo. CONICET. Argentina
249. Shervin Safavi. MPI Tübingen. Germany
250. Catarina Carona. I3S. Portugal
251. Bence Ölveczky. Harvard University. United States
252. Andrew Straw. IMP. Austria
253. Lyle Long. Penn State Univ.. United States
254. Simion Pruna. Institute "Prof. N. Paulescu". Romania
255. Tod Thiele. Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology. Germany
256. Tomas Hromadka. Slovak Academy of Sciences. Slovakia
257. Stephen Eglen. University of Cambridge. United Kingdom
258. Tansu Celikel. Radboud University Nijmegan. Netherlands
259. Curtis Moshay. SynergyED™.org. United States
260. Igor Kagan. German Primate Center. Germany
261. Daniel Bendor. UCL. United Kingdom
262. Richard Born. Harvard Medical School. United States
263. Gasper Tkacik. IST Austria. Austria
264. Maneesh Sahani. UCL. United Kingdom
265. Vikram Chib. Johns Hopkins University. United States
266. Rava Azeredo da Silveira. Ecole Normale Supérieure. France
267. Hakwan Lau. UCLA. United States
268. Taha Yasseri. University of Oxford. United Kingdom
269. David Brito. University of Coimbra. Portugal
270. Duda Kvitsiani. Cold Spring Harbor Labs. United States
271. Zoltan Toroczkai. University of Notre Dame. United States
272. Laurence Hunt. UCL. United Kingdom
273. Emmanuel Procyk. CNRS. France
274. John Huguenard. Stanford University. United States
275. Stephen Coombes. University of Nottingham. United Kingdom
276. Leon Lagnado. University of Sussex. United Kingdom
277. Claudia Freire. Universidad A Coruna . Spain
278. Duje Tadin. University of Rochester. United States
279. Jean-Pierre Nadal. CNRS & EHESS. France
280. Masahito Yamagata. Harvard University. United States
281. Nathaniel Daw. New York University. United States
282. Mir-Shahram Safari. Brain Science Institute, RIKEN. Japan
283. Philippe Millet. University of Geneva. Switzerland
284. Michael Bale. Instituto de Neurociencias Alicante UMH-CSIC. Spain
285. Andreas Roepstorff. Aarhus University. Denmark
286. André Mouraux. Université catholique de Louvain. Belgium
287. Herc Neves. Uppsala University. Sweden
288. ROBERTO COLOM. UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE MADRID. Spain
289. Louis-Marie PLUMEL. Idiap Research Institute. Switzerland
290. Walter Paulus. Herr. Germany
291. Ryota Kanai. University of Sussex. United Kingdom
292. Kanchana Pandian. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. India
293. Hugo Cook. DePaul University. United States
294. Boris Chagnaud. LMU Munich. Germany
295. laurent cohen. ICM. France
296. Roberto Livi. University of Florence. Italy
297. Annycke xavier. in vivo brain. France
298. Alessandro Villa. University of Lausanne. Switzerland
299. Alessandro Torcini. Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Italy
300. Leszek Kaczmarek . Nencki Institute. Poland
301. Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo. Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Spain
302. yehezkel ben-ari. iNSERM. France
303. Oliver Schlüter. European Neuroscience Institute. Germany
304. Oscar Marin. King's College London. United Kingdom
305. Bert Kappen. Radboud University. Netherlands
306. Robert Hickman. Institute of Molecular Biology. Austria
307. Mark Hübener. MPI. Germany
308. Marcus Kaiser. Newcastle University. United Kingdom
309. Giovanni Galizia. Universität Konstanz. Germany
310. Antony Morland. University of York. United Kingdom
311. Flor Kusnir. University of Glasgow. United Kingdom
312. Fabian Sinz. University Tuebingen. Germany
313. Tim Gollisch. University Medical Center Göttingen. Germany
314. Dori Derdikman. Technion. Israel
315. Alexander Attinger. FMI. Switzerland
316. Alex Wade. University of York. United Kingdom
317. Rosalina Fonseca. Gulbenkian Institute of Science. Portugal
318. Wim Melis. University of Greenwich. United Kingdom
319. Thomas Wiecki. Brown University. Germany
320. Brent Doiron. University of Pittsburgh. United States
321. Bernd Porr. University of Glasgow. United Kingdom
322. Dave Langers. University of Nottingham. United Kingdom
323. Marco Manca. SCImPULSE Foundation. Switzerland
324. Rob Campbell. University of Basel. Switzerland
325. vincent torre. SISSA. Italy
326. Stijn Michielse. Maastricht University. Netherlands
327. maysam oladazimi. center of integrative neuroscience . Germany
328. Daniele Zullino. University Geneva. Switzerland
329. Joost Dessing. Queen's University Belfast. United Kingdom
330. Izumi Fukunaga. NIMR. United Kingdom
331. Theofanis Panagiotaropoulos. Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. Germany
332. Boris B. Quednow. University of Zurich. Switzerland
333. Peter Smittenaar. UCL. United Kingdom
334. Robert van Beers. VU University Amsterdam. Netherlands
335. Ho Ko. University College London, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong
336. Miloud Hadj Achour. IUSTI. France
337. Molly Crockett. University of Oxford. United Kingdom
338. Evelyne Sernagor. Newcastle university. United Kingdom
339. Bertram Gerber. Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology. Germany
340. Claire Wyart. Inserm/ICM. France
341. Alia Benali. University of Tuebingen. Germany.. Germany
342. Jaime de la Rocha. IDIBAPS. Spain
343. Stephen Brickley. Imperial College London. United Kingdom
344. Eva BONDA. NeuroAIsthesis. France
345. Marc Toussaint. University of Stuttgart. Germany
346. Emilio Palomares. ICIQ. Spain
347. Yael Niv. Princeton university. United States
348. David Brown. UCL. United Kingdom
349. Maria-Magdolna Ercsey-Ravasz. Babes-Bolyai University. Romania
350. Diogo Trigo. King's College London. United Kingdom
351. Dennis Goldschmidt. ETH/University of Zurich. Switzerland
352. Alexander Ecker. University of Tübingen. Germany
353. Rosario Sanchez Pernaute. Inbiomed Foundation. Spain
354. Kenneth Knoblauch. Inserm U846, Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute. France
355. Michael Nitsche. University Medical Center, Goettingen. Germany
356. Christian Plewnia. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen. Germany
357. Garikoitz Azkona. University of Barcelona. Spain
358. Maria-Rosario Luquin. University of Navarra . Spain
359. David Omer. MPI. Germany
360. Simon Baumann. Newcastle University. United Kingdom
361. Hugo van den Berg. Warwick University. United Kingdom
362. Matt Smear. University of Oregon. United States
363. Benoit Scherrer. Harvard Medical School. United States
364. Lionel Naccache. ICM. France
365. Claudia Feierstein. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. Portugal
366. Raiko Stephan. FMI. Switzerland
367. Caitlin Johnston. Arizona State University. United States
368. William Harris. University of Cambridge. United Kingdom
369. Torsten Fregin. AWI. Germany
370. Matthias Kaschube. FIAS. Germany
371. Peter beim Graben. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Germany
372. Wolfger von der Behrens. University and ETH Zurich. Switzerland
373. Marco Pelizzone. University of Geneva. Switzerland
374. Peter Roberts. University of Bristol. United Kingdom
375. Nouchine Hadjikhani. Harvard University. United States
376. Marco Lanzilotto. University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Italy
377. Regina Dahlhaus. FAU. Germany
378. Leon Fonville. King's College London. United Kingdom
379. Bernard Scott. Center for Sociocybernetics Research,Bonn. United Kingdom
380. Michele Guerra. University of Parma. Italy
381. Peter Bremen. Radboud University. Netherlands
382. Petko Kiriazov. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Bulgaria
383. Serafim Rodrigues. Plymouth University. United Kingdom
384. Menno Witter. Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Norway
385. Nicolas canil. maison de Lauberiviere. Canada
386. Carsten Mehring. University of Freiburg. Germany
387. Stefan Kiebel. TU Dresden. Germany
388. John Wood. UCL. United Kingdom
389. Cyril Monier. CNRS. France
390. Marc Spehr. RWTH Aachen University. Germany
391. Timothy Verstynen. Carnegie Mellon University. United States
392. Frank Kirchhoff. University of Saarland. Germany
393. Georg Nagel. Univ. Wuerzburg. Germany
394. Alessandra Lintas. University of Lausanne. Switzerland
395. Gaia Novarino. IST Austria. Austria
396. Dongsung Huh. Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL. United Kingdom
397. Emmanuel Klinger. MPI. Germany
398. Peter Kirsch. University of Heidelberg. Germany
399. Jan Benda. University Tuebingen. Germany
400. Klaas Enno Stephan. University of Zurich & ETH Zurich. Switzerland
401. Luis Miguel Martinez. Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante. Spain
402. Manuel Berning. MPI. Germany
403. teresa gimenez barbat. tercera cultura. Spain
404. Daniela Martínez de la Mora. Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Spain
405. Judit Makara. IEM. Hungary
406. Ludovic Righetti. MPI. Germany
407. Vishal Kapoor. MPI Tübingen. Germany.. Germany
408. Shawn Mikula. MPI. Germany
409. naomi middelmann. private citizen. Switzerland
410. Ines de Vega. Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. Germany
411. Maria José Rodrigo. University of La laguna. Spain
412. Julian Anslinger. Freelancer. Austria
413. Patrick Becker. Humboldt-University, Berlin. Germany
414. Steven Rose. Open University. United Kingdom
415. Manuel de Vega. University of La Laguna. Spain
416. Boris Kotchoubey. University of Tübingen. Germany
417. Manuela Piazza. Inserm. France
418. Ahmed Hisham Gardoh. Radboud university Nijmegen. Netherlands
419. Romain Franconville. Janelia Farm Research Campus (HHMI). United States
420. Jonny Kohl. Harvard University. United States
421. Javier Diaz-Nido. Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. Spain
422. Robert Hindges. Kings College London. United Kingdom
423. Urs Köster. UC Berkeley. United States
424. Antonio Rangel. Caltech. United States
425. Heliodoro Ruiperez. Retired. Spain
426. José M. Delgado-García. Universidad Pablo de Olavide. Spain
427. Helga Müller. Stadtschulrat für Wien. Austria
428. Wolfram Schultz. University of Cambridge. United Kingdom
429. Robert Bauer. Translational Neurosurgery. Germany
430. Friedrich Johenning. Charité University Medicine Berlin. Germany
431. Manuel Pastor. Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Spain
432. Christine Tardif. Max-Planck-Institute for Human Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Germany
433. Albert Costa. ICREA- Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Spain
434. Núria Sebastián Gallés. Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Spain
435. Jonas Obleser. Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Germany
436. Philipp Kanske. Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Germany
437. Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz. INSERM. France
438. Olivier Coulon. CNRS. France
439. Ernst Fehr. University of Zurich. Switzerland
440. Christopher Steele. Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Germany
441. Dierk Reiff. University Freiburg. Germany
442. Hilke Plassmann. ENS / INSEAD. France
443. Anton Sirota. Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München. Germany
444. Alon Korngreen. Bar-Ilan University. Israel
445. Izhar Bar-Gad. Bar-Ilan University. Israel
446. dieter swandulla. university of bonn. Germany
447. Ramon Carbo-Dorca. University of Girona. Spain
448. Agnès Gruart. Pablo de Olavide University. Spain
449. Antoni Valero-Cabré. CNRS UMR 7225 - ICM. France
450. Aishwarya Nair. University of Osnabruck. Germany
451. Lars Nyberg. Umeå University. Sweden
452. Tobias Rose. Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology. Germany
453. Tor Syvertsen. Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Norway
454. Enrique Sánchez González. Ciber-Seguridad GITS Informática - España. Spain
455. Joachim Funke. Departm. of Psychology, Heidelberg University. Germany
456. Jonathan Bradley. INSERM. France
457. Ricardo Cruz. swissvirtual. Switzerland
458. Salvatore Fara. Bernstein Center Freiburg. Germany
459. thierry Pozzo. INSERM. France
460. Carlos Moreno García. Farmacia de Jauja. Spain
461. Ursula Pia Jauch. University of Zurich. Switzerland
462. Veronica Egger. Regensburg University. Germany
463. Björn Friedrich. Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology. Germany
464. Sarah Jessen. MPI CBS. Germany
465. Michael Hörner. European Neuroscience Institute Göttingen. Germany
466. Laurent Lescaudron . Universty of Nantes. France
467. Giacomo Indiveri. University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Switzerland
468. Mario Gomes-Pereira. INSERM. France
469. Tonia Rihs. University of Geneva. Switzerland
470. Bruno Sevennec. CNRS. France
471. Julien Lefèvre. Aix-Marseille Université. France
472. Matthew Nelson. INSERM. France
473. Eberhard von Goldammer. FH Dortmund. Germany
474. Constanze Lenschow. Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience. Germany
475. Jyi Han Seng. UCSI University. Malaysia
476. Roger Traub. IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. United States
477. Marc Fisher. Tulane University. United States
478. Fabio Meneghini. SISSA. Italy
479. Dilek DEMIR. TU Wien . Austria
480. Jacob Duijnhouwer. Radboud University Nijmegen. United States
481. Pavel Itskov. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
482. Jacques Bourg. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
483. Carolina Doran. Champalimaud Foundation & University of Bristol. Portugal
484. Rosa Cossart. INSERM. France
485. Maria Vicente. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
486. Houman Safaai. Italian Institute of Technology. Italy
487. Kobi Rosenblum. University of Haifa. Israel
488. andrea burgalossi. University of Tübingen. Germany
489. Francisco Romero. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. Spain
490. Roberto Medina. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. Portugal
491. michel dulcire. CIRAD. France
492. Uwe Straehle. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology . Germany
493. Ignacio Ozcariz. Recol. Spain
494. Vasco Galhardo. Fac Medicina - Universidade do Porto. Portugal
495. Charles Gray. Montana State University. United States
496. Tiago Monteiro. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. Portugal
497. Jozsef Somogyi. retired. Hungary
498. Heinrich Betz. Max-Planck Institute. Germany
499. Jean-Pierre Mothet. CNRS. France
500. Sara Matias. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
501. Andrew Latto. Latto. United States
502. Christian H. Uhlig. Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg. Germany
503. Sebastian Schwaab. FH Köln. Germany
504. Stephan Bohlhalter. University of Bern. Switzerland
505. Orly Reiner. Weizmann Institute of Science. Israel
506. Julien Colomb. Hu berlin. Germany
507. Manuel Riquelme. UTHSCSA. United States
508. Steffen Kandler. NERF. Belgium
509. Nader Nikbakht. SISSA. Italy
510. Stacy Dalton. JHU. United States
511. Gabriel McKinsey. University of California San Francisco. United States
512. José Ribas Fernandes. University of Victoria. Canada
513. Stephen Jackson. Univerity of Nottinghm. United Kingdom
514. Bjoern Andres. MPI Informatics. Germany
515. Matthias Munk. MPI. Germany
516. Vinzenz Schönfelder. SISSA | Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati. Italy
517. Clara Ferreira. Oxford University. United Kingdom
518. Detlef Wegener. University of Bremen. Germany
519. Yves Moreau. University of Leuven. Belgium
520. Patrick Barland. Academia.edu. Spain
521. Miriam Klein-Flügge. UCL. United Kingdom
522. Zoltan Nadasdy. Eotvos Lorand University, NeuroTexas Institute, University of Texas. Hungary
523. Peter Bossaerts. University of Melbourne. Australia
524. Eduardo Dias-Ferreira. The Rockefeller University. United States
525. Linas Vilciauskas. New York University. United States
526. Merlin Lange. RIKEN. Japan
527. Gabriel Griesser. CIFOM-ET. Switzerland
528. Raphael Massarelli. University of Lyon. France
529. Wolfram Kawohl. University of Zurich. Switzerland
530. Arthur Leblois. CNRS. France
531. Béchir Jarraya. NeuroSpin. France
532. Günter Windau. Radboud University. Netherlands
533. Patrick Ruther. University of Freiburg. Germany
534. Carlos Gómez-Ariza. Universidad de Jaen. Spain
535. Paul Dean. Univeristy of Sheffield. United Kingdom
536. Boris Velichkovsky. Technical University Dresden, TUD. Germany
537. Rodrigo Abreu. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal. Portugal
538. Brigitte Chamak. U. Paris Descartes. France
539. Eric Everschor. Psychotherapeutische Praxis. Germany
540. Magor Lorincz. University of Szeged. Hungary
541. Bassam Atallah. Fundacao Champalimaud. Portugal
542. Steffen Scholpp. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Germany
543. Bahadir Kasap. Radboud University Nijmegen. Netherlands
544. Floris de Lange. Radboud University Nijmegen. Netherlands
545. Peter Redgrave. University of Sheffield. United Kingdom
546. Luis Carretie. Laboratorio de Neurociencia cognitiva y afectiva, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Spain
547. Hans Scherberger. University of Göttingen. Germany
548. Stephan van Gils. University of Twwente. Netherlands
549. Simone Lackner. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. Portugal
550. Tony Prescott. University of Sheffield. United Kingdom
551. Herbert Jaeger. Jacobs University Bremen. Germany
552. Luuk van de Rijt. Radboudumc, biophysics. Netherlands
553. Erwan Bezard. Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases. France
554. Yael Amitai. Ben-Gurion University. Israel
555. Wim Crusio. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. France
556. Xurxo Mariño. University of A Coruña. Spain
557. Ilan Lampl. Weizmann Institut. Israel
558. Jean Petitot. CAMS-EHESS. France
559. Krishna Kishore. University of Michigan. United States
560. Martial Van der Linden. University of Geneva. Switzerland
561. Vincent Croset. University of Oxford. United Kingdom
562. Andrew Matus. FMI. Switzerland
563. Benedetto De Martino. Cambridge University . United Kingdom
564. Ana Amaral. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
565. Inna Slutsky. Tel Aviv University. Israel
566. Madalena Fonseca. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
567. John Anderson. University of Toronto. Canada
568. Yuri Alexandrov. Institute of psychology RAS. Russia
569. Lukasz Kaczmarek. Adam Mickiewicz University. Poland
570. Marco Schieppati. University of Pavia. Italy
571. Mike Hemberger. Max Planck Insitute for Brain Research. Germany
572. Stéphane Viollet. CNRS - Aix Marseile University. France
573. Franck RUFFIER. CNRS, Aix-Marseille University. France
574. Michel Imbert. Ecole normale supérieure. France
575. Jonathan Roiser. UCL. United Kingdom
576. David Higgins. Ecole Normale Superieure. France
577. Antonio Javier Pons Rivero. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Spain
578. Ronald Welz. WDS Technologies SA. Switzerland
579. Pietro Vertechi. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. Portugal
580. Emma Cahill. University of Cambridge. United Kingdom
581. Tatiana Chernigovskaya. St. Petersburg State University. Russia
582. Elena Amenedo. University of Santiago de Compostela. Spain
583. David Holcman. Ecole Normale Superieure. France
584. Quentin Huys. University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Switzerland
585. ronald oosting. utrecht university. Netherlands
586. Gabriel Madirolas. Instituto Cajal, CSIC. Spain
587. Dani Martí. ENS, INSERM. France
588. Wim Fias. Ghent University. Belgium
589. Joana Nogueira. Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown . Portugal
590. Valentin Wyart. Inserm / Ecole Normale Superieure. France
591. Michael Suchocki. individual. Canada
592. Mathieu Desroches. Inria. France
593. Etienne Herzog. CNRS. France
594. Hedi Young. Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Portugal
595. Nachiket Kashikar. University of Sussex. United Kingdom
596. Gordon Pipa. University Osnabrück. Germany
597. Kae Nakamura. Kansai Medical University. Japan
598. Javier Cudeiro. University of A Coruña. Spain
599. Paula Maria Fuertes. Psychology. Spain
600. Fabio Simoes de Souza. Institute of Molecular Medicine. Portugal
601. Hazem Toutounji. Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück. Germany
602. Kenneth Miller. Columbia University. United States
603. Ben Seymour. University of Cambridge. United Kingdom
604. Renee Bleau. University of Glasgow. United Kingdom
605. Barry Dickson. HHMI. United States
606. Wolfgang Robinig. University of Graz. Austria
607. Foteini Vlachou. Instituto de História da Arte, Faculdade das Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Portugal
608. JP hugnot. inserm. France
609. David Gall. Université Libre de Bruxelles. Belgium
610. Herwig Baier. Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology. Germany

Ansisoitunempia neurofysilogeja tässä ei ole mukana, koska heillä ei ole kukaan koskaan kuvitellutkaan olevan mitään tekmistä euronerohörhöilyn kanssa.

Projektin esittelyä löytyy täätltä:

http://keskustelu.skepsis.fi/Message/FlatMessageIndex/374760?page=1#377263

(MInä luulin ennen tuota "Blue Brainia(kin)" vitsiksi...)

The $1.3B Quest to Build a Supercomputer Replica of a Human Brain

Even by the standards of the TED conference, Henry Markram’s 2009 TEDGlobal talk was a mind-bender. He took the stage of the Oxford Playhouse,clad in the requi- site dress shirt and blue jeans,and announced a plan that - if it panned out - would deliver a fully sentient hologram within a decade.He dedicated himself to wiping out all mental disorders and creating a self-aware artificial intelligence. And the South African-born neuroscientist pronounced that he would accomplish all this through an insanely ambitious attempt to build a complete model of a human brain - from synap-ses to hemispheres - and simulate it on a supercomputer. Markram was proposing a project that has bedeviled AI researchers for decades, that most had presumed was impossible. He wanted to build a working mind from the ground up.

In the four years since Markram’s speech,he hasn’t backed off a nanometer.The self-assured scientist claims that the only thing preventing scientists from understanding the human brain in its entirety - from the molecular level all the way to the mystery of consciousness - is a lack of ambition. If only neuroscience would follow his lead, he insists, his Human Brain Project could simulate the functions of all 86 billion neurons in the human brain, and the 100 trillion connections that link them. And once that’s done, once you’ve built a plug-and-play brain, anything is possible. You could take it apart to figure out the causes of brain diseases. You could rig it to robotics and deve-lop a whole new range of intelligent technologies. You could strap on a pair of virtual reality glasses and experience a brain other than your own.

The way Markram sees it, technology has finally caught up with the dream of AI: Computers are finally growing sophisticated enough to tackle the massive data prob-lem that is the human brain. But not everyone is so optimistic. “There are too many things we don’t yet know",says Caltech professor Christof Koch,chief scientific officer at one of neuroscience’s biggest data producers, the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. “The roundworm has exactly 302 neurons, and we still have no frigging idea how this animal works". Yet over the past couple of decades, Markram’s sheer persistence has garnered the respect of people like Nobel Prize-winning neuroscien-tist Torsten Wiesel and Sun Microsystems cofounder Andy Bechtolsheim. He has impressed leading figures in biology, neuroscience, and computing, who believe his initiative is important even if they consider some of his ultimate goals unrealistic.

Markram has earned that support on the strength of his work at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne,where he and a group of 15 postdocs have been taking a first stab at realizing his grand vision - simulating the behavior of a million-neuron portion of the rat neocortex. They’ve broken new ground on everything from the expression of individual rat genes to the organizing principles of the animal’s brain. And the team has not only published some of that data in peer-reviewed jour-nals but also integrated it into a cohesive model so it can be simulated on an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer.

The big question is whether these methods can scale. There’s no guarantee that Markram will be able to build out the rest of the rat brain, let alone the vastly more complex human brain. And if he can, nobody knows whether even the most faithful model will behave like a real brain - that if you build it,it will think.For all his bravado Markram can’t answer that question.“But the only way you can find out is by building it,” he says, “and just building a brain is an incredible biological discovery process.”

This is too big a job for just one lab, so Markram envisions an estimated 6,000 re-searchers around the world funneling data into his model. His role will be that of pro-phet,the sort of futurist who presents worthy goals too speculative for most scientists to countenance and then backs them up with a master plan that makes the nearly impossible appear perfectly plausible.Neuroscientists can spend a whole career on a single cell or molecule.Markram will grant them the opportunity and encouragement to band together and pursue the big questions.

And now Markram has funding almost as outsized as his ideas.On January 28, 2013 the European Commission - the governing body of the European Union - awarded him 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion). For decades, euroscientists and computer scientists have debated whether a computer brain could ever be endowed with the intelligence of a human.It’s not a hypothetical debate anymore. Markram is building it. Will he replicate consciousness? The EU has bet $1.3 billion on it.

Ancient Egyptian surgeons believed that the brain was the “marrow of the skull” (in the graphic wording of a 3,500-year-old papyrus). About 1,500 years later, Aristotle decreed that the brain was a radiator to cool the heart’s “heat and seething.” While neuroscience has come a long way since then, the amount that we know about the brain is still minuscule compared to what we don’t know.

Over the past century, brain research has made tremendous strides, but it’s all ato- mized and highly specific - there’s still no unified theory that explains the whole. We know that the brain is electric, an intricately connected network, and that electrical signals are modulated by chemicals. In sufficient quantity, certain combinations of chemicals (called neurotransmitters) cause a neuron to fire an electrical signal down a long pathway called an axon. At the end of the axon is a synapse, a meeting point with another neuron. The electrical spike causes neurotransmitters to be released at the synapse, where they attach to receptors in the neighboring neuron, altering its voltage by opening or closing ion channels. At the simplest level, comparisons to a computer are helpful. The synapses are roughly equivalent to the logic gates in a cir-cuit,and axons are the wires.The combination of inputs determines an output.Memo- ries are stored by altering the wiring. Behavior is correlated with the pattern of firing.

Yet when scientists study these systems more closely, such reductionism looks near-ly as rudimentary as the Egyptian notions about skull marrow. There are dozens of different neurotransmitters (dopamine and serotonin, to name two) plus as many neuroreceptors to receive them.There are more than 350 types of ion channel, the synaptic plumbing that determines whether a neuron will fire. At its most fine-grained at the level of molecular biology, neuroscience attempts to describe and predict the effect of neurotransmitters one ion channel at a time.At the opposite end of the scale is functional magnetic resonance imaging, the favorite tool of behavioral neurosci-ence. Scans can roughly track which parts of the brain are active while watching a ball game or having an orgasm, albeit only by monitoring blood flow through the gray matter: the brain again viewed as a radiator.

Two large effort - the Allen Brain Atlas and the National Institutes of Health-funded Human Connectome Project - are working at levels in between these two extremes, attempting to get closer to that unified theory that explains the whole.The Allen Brain Atlas is mapping the correlation between specific genes and specific structures and regions in both human and mouse brains. The Human Connectome Project is using noninvasive imaging techniques that show where wires are bundled and how those bundles are connected in human brains.

To add to the brain-mapping mix,President Obama in April announced the launch of an initiative called Brain (commonly referred to as the Brain Activity Map), which he hopes Congress will make possible with a $3 billion NIH budget. (To start, Obama is pledging $100 million of his 2014 budget.) Unlike the static Human Connectome Pro-ject,the proposed Brain Activity Map would show circuits firing in real time.At present this is feasible, writes Brain Activity Map participant Ralph Greenspan, “in the little fruit fly Drosophila.”

Even scaled up to human dimensions,such a map would chart only a web of activity, leaving out much of what is known of brain function at a molecular and functional level. For Markram, the American plan is just grist for his billion-euro mill. “The Brain Activity Map and other projects are focused on generating more data", he writes. “The Human Brain Project is about data integration.” In other words, from his exalted perspective, the NIH and President Obama are just a bunch of postdocs ready to work for him.

Markram has the tall build and tousled hair of a fashion model. Seated behind a clean desk in an office devoid of anything more personal than his white MacBook, he spends most of his days meeting with administrators, technicians, and collaborators. The office is down the street from his wet lab and halfway across campus from the Blue Gene computer facility.Markram speaks of brain slices and microchips in detail, but he is not just a scientist in the conventional sense, stooped over a lab bench like Jonas Salk. He belongs to a new breed of telegenic research executives, a sort of J. Craig Venter of the head. “I love experiments,” he says in a South African accent tweaked by more than a decade living and researching in Israel. “But I very quickly see that what I’m doing can be done far more efficiently.” Once the procedures for data collection are set, he believes, experiments can be outsourced or automated.

Understanding the brain writ large is what drives Markram. It has been his only se-rious interest since the age of 13, when his mother sent him from the Kalahari game farm where he’d spent his childhood to a boarding school outside Durban. His first year there, he stumbled across some research on schizophrenia and other mental disorders and directed his youthful energy into studying the mind. “It was just ama-zing to me that you could have a little more or less of some chemical and your whole worldview would be different,” he recalls, smiling with boyish wonder. “If you can switch a chemical and your personality changes, who are you?”

To find out,he took up psychiatry at the University of Cape Town but swiftly grew im- patient with the field.“I could see that this was not a science",he says with a wave of his hand. “I didn’t see any future in it, grouping people by symptoms and prescribing whatever drug the pharmaceutical companies said.”

So he quit medicine and joined the only Cape Town lab doing experimental neuro-science, directed by a young researcher named Rodney Douglas.Even then - 1985 - Markram had formed his ambition to understand the whole brain. But he had to start at a much more granular level. Over a one-year period Markram performed nearly a thousand experiments recording the effect of a neurotransmitter on neurons in the brain stem.

It was the beginning of his meteoric rise as an experimental neuroscientist. He got his PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science one of the leading research universi-ties in Israel - ”it was like landing in toyland", he remarks with a broad smile - and went on to consecutive postdocs at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, - Maryland, and the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germa-ny. “My mantra is diversity,” he says, explaining his peripatetic years. “I clone my mentors. I copy everything they do, and then I innovate on top of it.”

In 1995 he was recruited back to Weizmann as a senior scientist. In his new lab, Markram took up a technique that he’d learned from electrophysiologist Bert Sak-mann at Max Planck, for which Sakmann and physicist Erwin Neher won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Medicine. The procedure called for a researcher to access a living neuron with a “patch clamp,” really just a micron-wide pipette, to directly monitor the neuron’s electrical activity. With his exceptionally steady hands, Markram was the first researcher to patch two connected neurons simultaneously, a feat that put him in a position to see how they interacted.

By sending electrical signals between neurons and measuring their electrical res-ponses, he could test Hebb’s rule - neurons that fire together wire together - a fundamental neuroscience postulate. What Markram discovered was that the pattern of synaptic connections in a neural network is determined not only by whether neu-rons fire together but also by when they fire relative to one another. If an input spike of electrical current occurs before an output spike,the input connection is strengthe-ned. If the input spike comes after the output spike, the connection weakens.In other words, Markram proved that the brain is attentive to cause and effect.

Markram published his groundbreaking results in more than a half-dozen scientific papers, enough to earn him a full professorship by the age of 40.The lesson he drew from that success: He needed to set his sights much higher. “I realized that I could keep doing this for the rest of my career and I still wouldn’t really understand how the brain works,” Markram says. There were approximately 60,000 neuroscience pa-pers published every year, only increasing the field’s fragmentation. What neurosci-ence needed,he decided,was an enormous collaboration,with research protocols coordinated so that all the data would fire together - and naturally he thought he was the one to make it happen.

His vision matched the ambition of one man who could fund it: neuroscientist Patrick Aebischer, the newly appointed president of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technolo-gy, tasked with making the campus a leader in computer science and biomedicine. In 2002 he recruited Markram, and in 2005 he bought him an IBM Blue Gene - one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

From his position in Lausanne, Markram is simultaneously doing four things. He is running a wet lab that amasses data through experiments on brain tissue. Since 2005, he has been building a small-scale model and simulation of the rat neocortex (his initial Blue Brain project).He is now the coordinator of the lavishly funded Human Brain Project, spearheading a global initiative to coordinate data-gathering across labs worldwide. On top of all that, Markram is responsible for the simulation aspects of the HBP, building a virtual human brain from all the incoming data.

Markram’s Blue Gene supercomputer is a 10-minute walk from the Blue Brain wet lab, in a whitewashed room behind a sliding glass door. This is the second multi- million-dollar supercomputer Switzerland has given him in 10 years, with eight times more memory than his first. There are four racks of processors, each enclosed in a metal locker about the size of a washer/dryer. The loud drone of air-conditioning serves as a constant reminder that computing has a lot to learn about efficiency from the 20-watt human brain.

The Blue Gene will simulate Markram’s brain model - the model that uses all the experimental results Markram has collected over 10 years of industrial-strength science at Lausanne, as well as all of the studies he did at Weizmann. But the model isn’t just a massive database. Markram understood that it would take trillions of dol-lars, not billions,to experimentally model every part of the human brain.“Other people in the field were saying that we didn’t know enough to start",he says.(The Allen Brain Atlas’ Christof Koch, for one. Markram’s first mentor, Rodney Douglas, for another.) “What I realized was that you can get to the unknowns indirectly.It’s like putting toge- ther a puzzle with lots of missing pieces. If you can see the pattern, you can fill in the gaps.”

Markram calls the process predictive reverse-engineering, and he claims that it has already allowed him to anticipate crucial data that would have taken years to generate in a wet lab. For example, only about 20 of the 2,970 synaptic pathways in one small part of the rat neocortex have been experimentally measured. Detecting a pattern, he was able to fill in parameters for the remaining 2950 pathways and to observe them working together in a simulation. Then he measured several in the wet lab to validate his reverse-engineered data. The simulation proved correct.

Markram is a man seemingly mired in contradiction. He wants to know mankind by studying the rat. He wants to industrialize experimentation and one day make lab work obsolete. He insists on exhaustive biological detail yet strives to make the most general models possible. But if you listen carefully - filtering out his relentless boas-ting - the apparent contradictions resolve into complementary strategies: Without a dependable experimental base - focused on one species to which researchers have unlimited laboratory access - detailed modeling wouldn’t be possible. And without modeling and simulation,all that knowledge about the brain would amount to an inco- herent storehouse of trivia. But with a multilevel model of the rat brain as a template, scientists might find a rule governing how neurons connect and chart only a few, on the basis of which they could fill in the remainder. “A unifying model is a powerful ac-celerator, since it helps you prioritize experiments",he says. “I’m very pragmatic. The question is,what’s the minimum I need to know about the brain to reconstruct all of it?”

" Through it all,Markram continues to battle a chorus of serious-minded naysayers. The eminent neuroscientist Moshe Abeles of Bar-Ilan University in Israel points out that the brain “differs from one individual to another, and in some respect it also differs in each of us from day to day. Our ability to understand all the details of even one brain is practically zero. Therefore, the claim that accumulating more and more data will lead to understanding how the brain works is hopeless.”

Abeles didn’t keep his opinion to himself while Markram’s proposal was under review as one of six finalists (among about 120 entrants) for the billion-euro European Flag-ship Initiative grant. In the Israeli newspaper Haaretz last year, he proclaimed, “the Human Brain Project is irresponsible in terms of public interest. It’s obvious the re-searchers won’t be able to keep their promise.So it’s robbing the public purse on one hand and sabotaging the future of science on the other.”

Around the same time,harsh criticism also came from Rodney Douglas,who moved to Lausanne’s archrival, ETH Zurich,in 1995.“We need variance in neuroscience,” he declared at a session of the Swiss Academy of Sciences in January 2012, spreading the alarm that with a billion euros Markram could achieve a monopoly on the field.

“Rodney Douglas’ resistance is a farce",Markram responds,sounding less angry than sad. “It’s envy, it’s ego. He’s at the end of his career, measuring a piece of a circuit, and he still doesn’t know what it’s doing.” As if to prove Markram’s point, Douglas - who declined to be interviewed—will retire in July.

Christof Koch believes envy is responsible for most criticism of Markram. “This is not a zero-sum game",he says.“It isn’t that Henry is going to get a billion euros or neuro- science is going to get it. The money comes out of the European infra-structure. If it doesn’t go to his modeling facility, it might bail out another Greek or Italian bank.”

Though Koch remains skeptical of Markram’s 10-year time frame, that didn’t keep him from spending three days this spring in Lausanne,coordinating their respective research programs. “I like his vision,” Koch says. “The guy has cojones.” The distin-guished University of Manchester computer engineer Steve Furber, inventor of the ARM processor, is even more fully won over. “There aren’t any aspects of Henry’s vision I find problematic,” he asserts. “Except perhaps his ambition, which is at the same time both terrifying and necessary.”

Markram thinks that the greatest potential achievement of his sim would be to deter-mine the causes of the approximately 600 known brain disorders. “It’s not about un-derstanding one disease,” he says. “It’s about understanding a complex system that can go wrong in 600 different ways. It’s about finding the weak points.” Rather than uncovering treatments for individual symptoms, he wants to induce diseases in silico by building explicitly damaged models, then find workarounds for the damage.

Researchers have done the same with lab animals for decades, observing their be-havior after giving them lesions. The power of Markram’s approach is that the lesio-ning could be carried out endlessly in a supercomputer model and studied at any scale, from molecules to the brain as a whole.

A researcher could see the world as a schizophrenic while watching what is going on in the patient’s mind.

And the view wouldn’t just be from the outside.Neuroscientists could not only see the flow of neurotransmitters and ions but could also experience the delusions.“You want to step inside the brain", Markram says. He’ll achieve this by connecting his model brain to sensor-laden robotics and simultaneously recording what the robot is sensing and “thinking” as it explores physical environments, correlating audio-visual signals with simulated brain activity as the machine learns about the world. A neuro-scientist could then play back those perceptions as distorted by a damaged brain simulation. In an immersive 3-D environment, a researcher could see the world as a schizophrenic while watching what is going on in the schizophrenic’s mind.

In hype-driven contexts (such as his 2009 TED talk), Markram has hinted at the pos-sibility that a sim embodied in a robot might become conscious.Hardwired with Mark-ram’s model and given sufficient experience of the world, the machine could actually start thinking (à la Skynet and HAL 9000). While that has gained him a following among scifi enthusiasts, he separates such speculations from the hard work of doing real science. When pressed, he shows a rare touch of modesty. “A simulation is not the real thing,” he says. “I mean, it’s a set of mathematical equations that are being executed to recreate a particular phenomenon.” Markram’s job, simply put, is to get those equations right.

He plans to give the EU an early working prototype of this system within just 18 months - and vows to “open up this new telescope to the scientific community” within two and a half years - though he estimates that he’ll need a supercomputer 100,000 times faster than the one he’s got to build the premium version. Ever the optimist, he believes that Moore’s law (and the European Union) will deliver him that raw power in about a decade. However, he’ll also need far more data than even his industrial-strength Blue Brain lab can collect. Shortly after arriving at Lausanne,Markram deve-loped workflows that extracted experimental results from journals, strip-mining thou-sands of neuroscience papers only to find that the data was too inconsistent to use in a model.For a while,that looked like one of his biggest hurdles.But he has since been building standardized protocols for many of the labs participating in the Human Brain Project. His timing may be just right, with the data glut expected from the Allen Brain Atlas,the Human Connectome Project,and the Brain Activity Map According to Brown University neuroscientist John Donoghue, one of the key figures in the Obama-sanctioned initiative, “the two projects are perfect complements. The Human Brain Project provides a means to test ideas that would emerge from Brain Activity Map data, and Brain Activity Map data would inform the models simulated in the Human Brain Project.”

One of the few people with experience simulating the entire human brain (albeit in much less detail than Markram), University of Toronto psychologist Randy McIntosh is also tentatively optimistic about Markram’s project. “Technically speaking, I think it is possible to do this",he says.“I tend to think of the Human Brain Project in the same way one should have considered the Human Genome Project, where the thought was that once the genome was sequenced, we would solve genetic-based disease and understand the genetic basis of behavior. We are nowhere near that, but in moving toward that goal, a huge number of insights and innovations came.”

Genomics has proven that biology, like astronomy and physics, thrives on big data. In the 21st century, going big is the way of all science. The brain is due for a billion- euro enlargement.

Contributor Jonathon Keats ([email protected]) is the author of Forged:

Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age.


Toivotaan, että modet säilyttää tämän: tällaisilla linkeillä on tapana kadota, ja sitten on helvetinvaikea jälkikäteen metsästää HUUHAATA! (jos sellaista sattuisi ilmenemään).

Muokannut: Risto Koivula , 19.3.2014 2:14:53

Myös USAlla on olemassa oma hörhöprojetinsa, niin sanottu "Konnektomi" (Connec- tome, vrt.enomi) jonka tarkotsus on genomiprojektin mallin mukaan ja sen "avulla".  Todellisuudessa geenit eivät lainkaan määrää neuronien konkreettisia yksityiskohtai-sia yhteyksiä: (Rita) Levi-Montacinin periaate. Siitä tarkemmin toiste:

http://hameemmias.vuodatus.net/lue/2014/01/barrack-obama-ja-r-douglas-fi...

***

Jeff Hawkins, born Jeff Hawk.

Näytä aiemmat lainaukset (5)

Naturalisti kirjoitti:

Et tainnut edes lukea mitä edellä sanoin tai et ymmärtänyt minun ehkä liian lyhyt-tä selostusta (noista Jeff Hawkinsin kirjoista pääsee asian ymmärtämisen alkuun).

Totesit näin:"Tuossa selityksessä on looginen virhe,eikä se vastaa kokemusta ai-vojen toiminnasta. 1. Synapsit eivät voi laukoa suoraan alkuperäisen informaation perusteella, siihen tarvitaan ohjausta. "

Synapsit eivät lauo mitään.Ne vain välittävät aksonissa ilmenevien aktiopotentiaa-lipulssien vaikutuksia denriteihin. Neuronit lauloivat pulsseja aksoneihin. Pylvään neuronien aktivaatlojen taso (lyhytaikaiset analogiset muistit) riippuu niiden sy-napseihin tulleiden pulssien märästä tietyssä aikaikunassa ja vaikutukset välittä-vien synapsien vahvuuksista sekä ajasta, joka on kulunut niiden edellisestä lau-keamisesta. Ne synapsit vahvistuvat, jotka aikaansaavat eli osallistuvat pulsseja vastaanottavan neuronien laukeamisen. Pylvään synapsit (niiden vahvuudet) ovat pitkäaikainen muisti.

Totesit sitten ilmeisesti kohtana 2 näin: "Muste tahrakokeet kertovat, että aivot luovat kokemuksen vähäistenkin viitteiden perusteella. "

Näin on. Kuten aiemmin totesin pylväiden pelkistetyn tilakonemetaforan mukaan pylväiden tilansiirtologiikka (eli pylvään neuronien muodostama syvä neuroverk-ko) muodostaa pylvään aktivaatiotiloihin (lyhytaikaisesti tallentuvan) seuraavan tilan arvon aisti-inormaattion ja pylväiden nykytilan perusteella talamokortikaaliten silmukoiden tahdistamina.

Sitten totesit näin:

"3.On havaittu, että pääasiassa vai yhtä aikaa syntyneet neuronit kommunikoivat keskenään; se vie pohjan koko pylvästeorialta. "

Aikalailla hatusta tempaista johtopäätös. Tuo premissi voi olla ihan pätevä. Se on selitettävissä esimerkiksi sillä, että jo aiemmin opittua ei aivojen mekanismissa jyrä uuden tiedon alle (kuten monissa nykyisissä neuroverkkosovelluksissa), vaan poikkeavalle uudelle tiedolle muodostetaan uusia rakenteita. Tämä on tuolle ilmiölle yksi mahdollinen hypoteesi.

Lopuksi värit: "Ei ole mitään todistetta, että olisi olemassa erillinen lyhytaikainen ja pitkäaikainen muisti, se on vain jonkun keksimä väite, jota ei ole todistettu. "

Juuri näinhän minä totesin noista kognitiivisen neurotieteen keksimistä monenkir-javista vanhentuneenseen tietokonemetaforaan perustuvista muistityypeistä. Ne nyt tässä tilanteessa, kun parempiakaan malleja ei vielä ole keksitty, ovat siinä mielessä hyödyllisiä fiktioita, että niitä käyttäen on mahdollista koota empiiristä tietoa organisoidulla tavalla.

Nuo minun pitkäaikaiseksi (synapsien vahvuudet) ja lyhytaikaiseksi (neuronien aktivaatiotilat) muisteiksi nimeämäni rakenteet ovat neurotieteen toteamia faktoja. Väitteeni mukaan niiden avulla voidaan selittää kaikki kognitiivisen neurotieteen muustityypit, mutta se selitys ei mahdu tähän.

Helvetinmoista paskaa näyttää tämä Jeff Hawkins olavan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hawkins

Tosinto eräästä (Elon Muskin buurikaverista) Henry Markhamista, johon kankkulankaivoon EU dumppasi vuonna 2013 laakista 1.3 miljardia euroa...

https://hameemmias.vuodatus.net/lue/2014/07/europuoskaritieteen-kupla-po...

" lauantai, 12. heinäkuu 2014

Europuoskaritieteen kupla poksahtaa

Scientists threaten to boycott €1.2bn Human Brain Project 

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/07/human-brain-project-resea...

... The European commission launched the €1.2bn (£950m) Human Brain Project (HBP) last year with the ambitious goal of turning the latest knowledge in neuro-science into a supercomputer simulation of the human brain. More than 80 European and international research institutions signed up to the 10-year project. ...

Researchers say European commission-funded initiative to simulate human brain suffers from 'substantial failures'.

***

Yhä jotkut uskovat rojehtiin... Minun mielestäni tiede sanoo, että (fysikaaliselle) koneelle ei voi kehittyä mieltä meidän ihmisten merkityksessä.

https://www.forssanlehti.fi/mielipiteet/voiko-kone-joskus-ajatella-ei-ole-mitaan-tieteen-tuntemaa-periaatteellista-estetta-sille-etta-myos-koneelle-voitaisiin-kehittaa-mieli-825511

" Voiko kone joskus ajatella? – Ei ole mitään tieteen tuntemaa periaatteellista estettä sille, että myös koneelle voitaisiin kehittää mieli

2.11.2020

Tietokone ei yllä ihmisaivojen tasolle. Kuva: graafikko

Mitä ajattelu on? Sitä filosofit ovat pohtineet jo tuhansia vuosia. Materialismin mukaan se on aivojen luoman mielen ilmiö, mutta dualistit väittävät sen olevan materiasta riippumattomaan henkiseen ulottuvuuteen kuuluvan sielun ilmiö.

Tieteellisen käsityksen, materialismin mukaan ihmisillä ja kehittyneillä eläimillä on materiaalisten aivojen tuottama mieli; ei henkimaailman ikuista sielua. Ei ole myös-kään mitään tieteen tuntemaa periaatteellista estettä sille, että myös koneelle voitai-siin kehittää mieli. Ihmismieli olisi sille hyvä malli, mutta kukaan ei vielä tiedä miten se toimii. Joka tapauksessa ajatteleva kone voidaan tehdä vain tämän maailman aineksista, jos ollenkaan.

Tekoäly on yhä vahvempi kehityksen veturi, mutta vahva tekoäly on ollut esillä lähin-nä vain scifi-juttujen kauhuskenaarioissa; ihmiskuntaa orjuuttavana superälynä. Nyt länsimaat pelkäävät Kiinan saavan kohta ylivallan tekoälyssä. Uhkaa pohdittiin myös A-studiossa 1.7.2020. Kuitenkaan sen enempää kiinalainen kuin mikään muukaan kauhistuttava tai ihastuttava tekoäly ei ole vielä vahvaa tekoälyä; mikään kone ei vielä ajattele.

Harmillisesti kognitiivinen psykologia ja tekoälytutkimus ovat kärsineet alusta saak-ka liian primitiivisestä tietokonemetaforasta; ajatuksesta, että aivot toimivat tietoko-neen tavoin. Parempi olisi ajatella niin, että tietokone pitäisi saada toimimaan aivojen tavoin. Dualismi olisi pitkälle pätevää ajattelua, jos tuonpuoleinen ikuinen sielu korvattaisiin aivojen neuraalisten prosessien toteuttamalla mielellä. Ajatteleva kone tarvitsee autonomisen ajallisesti olemassa olevan materiaalisen mielen.

Vuonna 2013 käynnistynyt EU:n rahoittama 1,2 miljardin euron ihmisaivoprojekti (Human Brain Project, HBP) valmistuu aikataulun mukaan 2023. Sen tavoitteena on kehittää simulaattori, joka simuloi aivoja neuronien biologisten toimintojen tasolla. Tähän tarvitaan valtava useiden exaflopsien (1018) laskentateho eli tulevaisuuden ns. exa-luokan kone.

Ensi vuonna ”Hewlett Packard toimittaa maailman mahtavimpiin kuuluvan supertie-tokoneen Kajaaniin – laskentateho vastaa yli 1,5 miljoonaa läppäriä” (KS 21. 10. 2020). Tämän ns. esiexa-luokan supertietokoneen laskentateho on vasta 150 petaflopsia (1015) eli 0,150 exaflopsia.

Ihmisaivo projektiin kehitettävä kone on tarkoitettu aivotutkimuksen, neurofysiolo-gian, mikrobiologian ja niihin liittyvän tietotekniikan tutkimukseen sekä ainakin epäsuorasti myös tekoälytutkimukseen.

Entä alkaako tämä supertietokone simulaation käynnistyessä ajattelemaan? No ei ala, eikä kukaan sitä odotakaan. Siltä puuttuu vielä kokonaan se tietämys, jonka ihminen hankkii vuorovaikutuksessa ympäristönsä kanssa, sekä tähän tarvittavat vuorovaikutuskeinot.

Vakavasti otettavan vahvan tekoälytutkimuksen esteenä on rahoituksen puute. Ra-hoituksen suuntaamiseen vain kapeaan tekoälyyn vaikuttaa sekä teollisuuden välit-tömät intressit että vahvan tekoälyn mahdottomana pitäminen uskonnollisista syistä.

Raimo Rintamäki "

***

https://blog.frontiersin.org/2017/06/12/blue-brain-team-discovers-a-multi-dimensional-universe-in-brain-networks/

" Blue Brain Team Discovers a Multi-Dimensional Universe in Brain Networks

Posted on June 12, 2017 by Frontiers Communications in Neuroscience // 8 Comments

Using mathematics in a novel way in neuroscience, the Blue Brain Project shows that the brain operates on many dimensions, not just the three dimensions that we are accustomed to

https://youtu.be/kFABQ2XVuTE

Using mathematics in a novel way in neuroscience, the Blue Brain Project shows that the brain operates on many dimensions, not just the three dimensions that we are accustomed to.

For most people, it is a stretch of the imagination to understand the world in four dimensions but a new study has discovered structures in the brain with up to eleven dimensions – ground-breaking work that is beginning to reveal the brain’s deepest architectural secrets.

Using algebraic topology in a way that it has never been used before in neuroscience, a team from the Blue Brain Project has uncovered a universe of multi-dimensional geometrical structures and spaces within the networks of the brain.

The research, published today in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, shows that these structures arise when a group of neurons forms a clique: each neuron connects to every other neuron in the group in a very specific way that generates a precise geometric object. The more neurons there are in a clique, the higher the dimension of the geometric object.

Topology in neuroscience: The image attempts to illustrate something that can not be imaged – a universe of multi-dimensional structures and spaces. On the left is a digital copy of a part of the neocortex, the most evolved part of the brain. On the right are shapes of different sizes and geometries in an attempt to represent structures ranging from 1D to 7D and beyond. The “black-hole” in the middle is used to symbolise a complex x of multi-dimensional spaces, or cavities. Courtesy of the Blue Brain Project

“We found a world that we had never imagined",says neuroscientist Henry Markram, director of Blue Brain Project and professor at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, and co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers, “there are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.”

Markram suggests this may explain why it has been so hard to understand the brain. “The mathematics usually applied to study networks cannot detect the high-dimensional structures and spaces that we now see clearly.”

If 4D worlds stretch our imagination, worlds with 5, 6 or more dimensions are too complex for most of us to comprehend. This is where algebraic topology comes in: a branch of mathematics that can describe systems with any number of dimensions. The mathematicians who brought algebraic topology to the study of brain networks in the Blue Brain Project were Kathryn Hess from EPFL and Ran Levi from Aberdeen University.

“Algebraic topology is like a telescope and microscope at the same time. It can zoom into networks to find hidden structures – the trees in the forest – and see the empty spaces – the clearings – all at the same time,” explains Hess.

In 2015, Blue Brain published the first digital copy of a piece of the neocortex — the most evolved part of the brain and the seat of our sensations,actions,and conscious- ness. In this latest research, using algebraic topology, multiple tests were performed on the virtual brain tissue to show that the multi-dimensional brain structures disco-vered could never be produced by chance.Experiments were then performed on real brain tissue in the Blue Brain’s wet lab in Lausanne confirming that the earlier disco-veries in the virtual tissue are biologically relevant and also suggesting that the brain constantly rewires during development to build a network with as many high-dimensional structures as possible.

When the researchers presented the virtual brain tissue with a stimulus, cliques of progressively higher dimensions assembled momentarily to enclose high-dimensio-nal holes, that the researchers refer to as cavities. “The appearance of high-dimen-sional cavities when the brain is processing information means that the neurons in the network react to stimuli in an extremely organized manner,” says Levi. “It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc. The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates.”

The big question these researchers are asking now is whether the intricacy of tasks we can perform depends on the complexity of the multi-dimensional “sandcastles” the brain can build. Neuroscience has also been struggling to find where the brain stores its memories. “They may be ‘hiding’ in high-dimensional cavities,” Markram speculates.

---

Original research article: Cliques of Neurons Bound into Cavities Provide a Missing Link between Structure and Function

Citation: Reimann MW,Nolte M,Scolamiero M,Turner K, Perin R, Chindemi G, Dłotko P, Levi R, Hess K and Markram H (2017) Cliques of Neurons Bound into Cavities Provide a Missing Link between Structure and Function. Front. Comput. Neurosci. 11:48. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2017.00048

This research was funded by: ETH Domain for the Blue Brain Project (BBP) and the Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry (LNMC); The Blue Brain Project’s IBM BlueGene / Q system, BlueBrain IV,funded by ETH Board and hosted at the Swiss National Su- percomputing Center (CSCS); NCCR Synapsy grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation; GUDHI project, supported by an Advanced Investigator Grant of the European Research Council and hosted by INRIA.