Mission to build a simulated brain begins

New Scientist ran an article on Monday titled, Mission to build a simulated brain begins. It opens with,

An effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level, was launched on Monday.

The “Blue Brain” project, a collaboration between IBM and a Swiss university team, will involve building a custom-made supercomputer based on IBM’s Blue Gene design.

The hope is that the virtual brain will help shed light on some aspects of human cognition, such as perception, memory and perhaps even consciousness.

On the one hand, it reads like bad sci-fi. “Mission to outer space begins!” or some such grandiose scheme involving peta-hyper-chrono-drive spaceships and (gasp) mechanical brains!

On the other hand, it strikes too close to the heart dismiss lightly. We can get so caught up with fights like evolution vs. creationism that we lose sight of the real mysteries in the universe. The question of how brains actually work has intrigued me for decades.

I remember trying to get a handle on it back in college. I took two 400 level courses at the same time, Artificial Intelligence and Psychology of Thinking. (It took a bit of finagling for me to get into the psych course, since I had not taken any of the prerequisites, so here is a belated thanks to my parents. I told the professor that they had degrees in psych and social work so of course I was prepared for his class. Fortunately, the prof bought it.) But I digress.

I hoped that if I took AI and psychology at the same time, I might learn how our brains work from two perspectives and thereby gain a deeper understanding. I ended up being deeply disappointed. I learned that the shrinks knew more about aphasia than thought, knew a bit about what pieces of the brain were responsible for “vision” or “hearing” or “speech” but didn’t have a clue how any of them worked. From the geeks, I learned how to play go, that they didn’t have any solid ideas about how a brain “knew” stuff, and that the computers of the day weren’t anywhere near fast enough to approach solving the problem.

Today my hope is rekindled. Over the last few months, I have bumped into literature that the brain works more like an orchestra than a digital computer (The Music of the Brain). This seems much more reasonable to me. Rather than try to force the brain to work like the model that we have at hand, we may have found a model which more closely matches reality.

“Blue Brain” may just be a key component in this discovery journey. We may finally have the computing power to actually test our theories.

We’ve come a long way in the 25 years since I was at the University of Michigan. I can’t wait to see how much we know 25 years from now.