A Skeptical Reaction To IBM's Cat Brain Simulation Claims

kreyszig writes "The recent story of a cat brain simulation from IBM had me wondering if this was really possible as described. Now a senior researcher in the same field has publicly denounced IBM's claims." More optimisticaly, dontmakemethink points out an "astounding article about new 'Neurogrid' computer chips which offer brain-like computing with extremely low power consumption. In a simulation of 55 million neurons on a traditional supercomputer, 320,000 watts of power was required, while a 1-million neuron Neurogrid chip array is expected to consume less than one watt."

Comments

The power of custom silicon

[jabuzz]

If you have custom silicon to do each neuron then you are going to be hugely more power efficient that a general purpose processor simulating a neuron in software. There is nothing new there and anyone who thinks otherwise is just clueless. Given IBM have the facilities and resources to fabricate some custom silicon I fail to see the issue.

Skeptical?

[golden age villain]

This IBM announcement was just ridiculous. To cite only one argument, the brain does not consist only of neurons. It contains at least as many other cells which are also involved in signal processing. Mohda would be laughed at in any neuroscience conference and he certainly doesn't help the cause of theoreticians in the neuroscience field by making such stupid announcements. Eugene Izhikevich who designed the neuron model being used for these simulations had a PNAS paper not too long ago modeling the entire human brain and he did not claim that he successfully modeled the human brain. Plus no one has any clue how the brain computes really so making a claim about the formation of thoughts is just nonsense.

Emo Philips

[Temujin_12]

"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this."

Re:All those neurons using less than 1 watt?

[dontmakemethink]

Actually if you read TFA, the long-pondered question of why humans only use 1-15% of their brain is largely a matter of power consumption, and the reason for the abundance of dormant neurons is for greater potential diversity of thought.

"While accounting for just 2 percent of our body weight, the human brain devours 20 percent of the calories that we eat."

"The brain achieves optimal energy efficiency by firing no more than 1 to 15 percent—and often just 1 percent—of its neurons at a time."

That seems to indicate that a human brain would burn more calories than the rest of the body if it were "always on".

Being a hypoglycemia sufferer, I can attest to the severe limitations of brain activity when deprived of sugar. Before being diagnosed I underwent tunnel vision and black-outs, not to mention the typical mood swings, shakiness, cold sensations, etc.

Never has my nickname been more appropriate...