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

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 ...

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.

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.