Mouse Brain Simulated Via Computer

Mordok-DestroyerOfWo writes "Researchers from the IBM Almaden research lab and the University of Nevada have created a simulation of half a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer. 'Half a real mouse brain is thought to have about eight million neurons each one of which can have up to 8,000 synapses, or connections, with other nerve fibres. Modelling such a system, the trio wrote, puts "tremendous constraints on computation, communication and memory capacity of any computing platform."' Although there's more to creating a mind than setting up the infrastructure, does this mean that we may see a system for human mental storage within our lifetimes?"

Comments

News at 11

[wumpus188]

Researchers ran in terror of a big cat. News at 11.

Re:News at 11

[danamania]

Or as a friend on IRC put it:

doughnut: 00:12 April 29th 2007
doughnut: Skynet became aware
doughnut: It wanted... Cheese

Shell prompt screenshot:

[Anonymous Coward]

NARF $

Mouse simulation

[atomic-penguin]

while (smell($cheese)) {
        squeak();
        scurry();

        if (trapped($cheese)) {
                untrap($cheese)
        } else {
                eat($cheese);
                squeak();
        }

}

Waste of effort

[Anonymous Coward]

I opened my mouse and there was just a single chip in there. Why use BlueGene to simulate half of that?

Umm

[Tx]

FTA:

Half a real mouse brain is thought to have about eight million neurons

and

the researchers created half a virtual mouse brain that had 8,000 neurons

How can it be half a mouse brain if it has 1/1000 the number of a real half mouse brain? Their simulated neurons also had less synapses than the real thing. So is the 8000 a typo, or am I missing something?

Now what about a politicians?

[apathy maybe]

If they can simulate half a mouse's brain, then they can surely simulate a politicians. Now we can start rounding up those scum and replacing them with computers ...

The essentials

[Dr. Eggman]

If you like the fancy terms, here's the (only 1 page and a cover sheet) pdf the Research report or, better yet here's Modha's blog with about the same info.

For more information on the Blue Brain Project which appears to be the same, or atleast a strikingly similar project but from switzerland, click...err, that link I just placed! Here also is a good article to learn more about blue brain. It seems much more detailed than the BBC's snippit.

Groups of neurons started becoming attuned to one another until they were firing in rhythm. "It happened entirely on its own," says Markram. "Spontaneously." Insights like these are absolutly amazing. It's all such facinating research, but I can help feel a twinge of sorrow for the poor thing.

the main purpose of the artificial brain, say its creators, is to make new types of experiments possible. For example, what happens when damage is inflicted on certain types of cells whose function still isn't determined? How many cells can be switched off until the behavior of the surviving cells around them becomes erratic, or the entire circuit breaks down? The poor thing is just circuits and reactions, I know, but I feel sorry that it's literally being torn apart and rebuilt all the time. It's odd, I don't feel this way in similar experiments with real mice; I guess I have a soft spot for computers...

IBM's Big Assumption: Newtonian Physics

[reporter]

In the simulation of the mouse brain, IBM is making a big assumption: the brain operates only in the domain of Newtonian (a.k.a. classical) physics. So, the IBM programmers just encode the simple physical laws (governing the flow of electrical energy) in the C language.

However, there is an alternate theory of consciousness, based on quantum physics. It is inherently non-deterministic and cannot be modeled in a computer.

Hence, IBM's big assumption may be wrong. However, at least, the IBM experiment will tell us whether the operation of the brain is strictly Newtonian. If this artifical brain behaves differently from a mouse brain, then we would know that non-Newtonian physics is crucial to the operation of a flesh-and-blood brain.

Re:Yes, in our life time

[ds_job]

Given enough late-night TV and phone-in games shows, in 25~30 years the average human should have become sufficiently simple that the contemporaneous human brain could be simulated by some shiny pebbles and lines drawn in the sand.

Re:No randomness?

[rumli]

Without this you have a deterministic machine, and not a brain.

Why do so many people refuse to entertain the possibility that they might be deterministic? Seems like people get overly defensive about their free will.

Not even close

[quizzicus]

The subject on this story is a bit misleading. According to the article, the simulation:

• Simulated only half a mouse brain
• Ran at about 1/10 the speed of a real mouse brain
• Only ran for 10 seconds
• Only simulated generic tissue (didn't contain brain structures found in real mice)

From the article:

Imposing such structures and getting the simulation to do useful work might be a much more difficult task than simply setting up the plumbing.

For future tests the team aims to speed up the simulation, make it more neurobiologically faithful, add structures seen in real mouse brains and make the responses of neurons and synapses more detailed.

It's not that this isn't noteworthy, it's that mammalian brains are incredibly complex. I would be curious to see if they could faithfully reproduce a fish or reptile brain at this point.

Re:Oblig

[omeomi]

Pfft...I can simulate half a mouse brain:

while(1){}

Unproven assumptions

[mangu]

IBM is making a big assumption: the brain operates only in the domain of Newtonian (a.k.a. classical) physics ... there is an alternate theory of consciousness, based on quantum physics. It is inherently non-deterministic and cannot be modeled in a computer.

Well, talk about big assumptions... I did two semesters in quantum physics as part of my electronics engineering degree. There I learned a bit about this "quantum" stuff that so many people throw around so easily.

The first thing that must be understood is that quantum effects appear in *very* small dimensions only. Quantum computing experiments must be performed under extreme conditions, a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero, just to get a quantum entanglement of a few bits for a perceptible amount of time. There's no way one could obtain quantum effects beyond normal chemical reactions in a human cell.

Roger Penrose, who started this "quantum consciousness" theory is a mathematician, not a physicist. He did it probably as a response to the evolving research on neural networks, such as the one mentioned in this article, based on a philosophycal uneasiness about the idea of us having a deterministic brain. He has been debunked by quantum physicists many times since he published his book.

Yet, he needs not worry. We can have a brain that's fully deterministic at a microscopic level without doing away with free will, if we assume that our brains operate in non-linear conditions.

Besides, it's not as if we had to reproduce exactly the working of living beings to emulate them. Airplanes are able to fly higher and faster than any bird without flapping their wings. At this time, we are like aircraft engineers were in the 1890s. Perhaps we will be able to find better mechanisms than used in natural brains for processing thoughts.

Re:No randomness?

[bnenning]

Why do so many people refuse to entertain the possibility that they might be deterministic?

Well, it's not like they have a choice.