The Human Brain Project

http://www.humanbrainproject.eu

by snippyhollow • 13 years ago

82 31 13 years ago

vilqqu• 13 years ago

The project received one billion euros funding today http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/doc/p...

devopstom• 13 years ago

It'd be interesting if that page listed jobs at partner organisations.. I'd love to be involved with a project like that, but it's difficult to get involved.

a-priori2• 13 years ago

Honestly, have you tried simply contacting the project? That's how I got an internship on the Blue Brain Project a few years ago (and in fact have a cameo in the video).

apdavison2• 13 years ago

I would suggest checking back after the summer, which is when the project should actually start.

Also note, "The HBP has allocated a large proportion of its funding to what we call Competitive Calls. The HBP Competitive Calls Programme will allow researchers from outside the HBP Consortium to propose research and applications development projects using the HBP platforms and to receive funding from the HBP. Proposals will be evaluated by peer reviewers from outside the Consortium. We expect to see many proposals for research and approaches that the current Consortium has never considered"

and

"From year 3 onwards the HBP will fund a large number of HBP Ph.D studentships and post-doctoral fellowships."

(my understanding is that these are in addition to any postdocs recruited by partner organizations using their individual funding for the project).

furbo• 13 years ago

If that simulation would be conscious, wouldn't it be just as bad (if not worse) as performing experiments on animals ? and if it wouldn't be conscious, wouldn't it conflict with the beliefs of most scientists on the origin of consciousness ?

yk• 13 years ago

If the HBP is really a success and the simulation is conscious, then the simulation should probably get similar rights and protections as a human. ( Whatever freedom of movement means for a supercomputer is a rather interesting additional question. ) And this would likely mean, that the possible experiments on such a simulation need to be severely restrained. On the other hand, if a sufficiently advanced simulation of the human brain would not be conscious, then we run into trouble regarding the purely physical nature of human brains.

However, I tend to think that a more rigid definition of consciousness is needed ( and may well be one of the major results of the HBP). I think this, because I am thinking about similar complex programs as a full brain simulation, which demonstrate complex behavior, but no consciousness. ( For example very detailed simulations of super nova explosions.)

modeless• 13 years ago

A digital computer simulation would be fundamentally different from a brain. It could be replicated, backed up, and restored with perfect fidelity. In my view that completely changes the ethics of experimentation.

DanBC• 13 years ago

> Modern computing technology has brought these goals within sight.

Haven't we been saying this since we had vacuum tubes and early chess programs?

We thought machine vision would be easy and that turned out pretty tricky.

> ICT is ready to give us a completely new understanding of the brain and its diseases; understanding the brain will lead inevitably to radical innovation in computing.

I can't help feeling this is backwards. As we learn more about the brain our simulations become better. But I'd be really interested in any computer simulations that have improved our understanding of brain stuff.

dalai4• 13 years ago

> I can't help feeling this is backwards.

What they are trying to say is that we can put a lot more data into our simulations and run them at different abstraction levels, which will help us improve our understanding of the brain. This improved understanding can be used for innovation in computing, e.g. through neuromorphic processors, see http://www.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/cms/groups/vision/projects/... which is one of the project partners.

streptomycin2• 13 years ago

Why start with the human brain? Why not do something simpler first? We can't even simulate the C. elegans brain yet http://lesswrong.com/lw/88g/whole_brain_emulation_looking_at... and that is ridiculously simpler than the human brain.

neuroguy2• 13 years ago

From the FAQ - Why not begin with simple organisms like C.elegans?

There are two problems here. The first is feasibility; the second is the relevance of our results. Feasibility. Neuroscientists have mapped all of C.elegans’ 300 or so neurons. However, enormous amounts of key data needed are still missing. For instance we do not have enough data on the physiology and pharmacology of C. Elegans neurons and synapses. And we still have limited data on the distribution of ion channels, receptors and other proteins on neurons, synapses and glia. Without this data we cannot build unifying models. A second problem is how easy it is to obtain the data. The crucial requirement for unifying models is the ability to access the data needed. Obtaining a deep understanding of the molecular machinery of a single neuron or a single synapse is just as difficult in C. Elegans as in human beings. And many datasets – particularly data on cognition - are actually easier to acquire in rodents, or even in humans. So we can’t just say: “let’s do this quickly in worms and do complex brains later”: we have to solve the same basic challenges, whatever brain we model. What we are actually doing is building a generic strategy we can use to reconstruct any brain.

Relevance: Studying the “simple” nervous systems of organisms like C.elegans or drosophila, is obviously very important, particularly for molecular and genetic studies. However the organization, electrophysiology and function of the mammalian brain are quite different. One of the HBP’s most important goals is to contribute to the development of new treatments for brain disease. But pharmaceutical companies already have great difficulties in translating results from mouse to human beings; with simpler organisms these problems become much worse. If we want to make a real contribution to clinical research, it is probably unwise to invest heavily in simple systems, so distant from the human brain.

pbw• 13 years ago

So sure there are low-level details that must be understood for any brain, but come on, 300 vs. 100B?

Once the big projects have cracked the low-level details, someone will figure out C. elegans. Until we have some smaller organisms emulated, don't expect to have a conversation with their emulated human brain, I just can't see that happening out of order.

upquark• 13 years ago

I'm not a neuroscientist and may be missing something, but on the surface this seems like a pretty poor argument: citing feasibility as a justification for not going with the (overwhelmingly) simpler organisms first, and going after humans with several orders of magnitude more complex brains. If I were to guess, I'd say that building the unified model of the simplest organisms would be tremendously relevant in helping to model higher-level organisms including humans.

jpwagner• 13 years ago

I don't necessarily doubt the scientists' competence here, but they're just playing the fundraising game when they talk about "disease" in this context.

a-priori2• 13 years ago

I agree that the word "disease" is certainly overused these days, there are still some things that should rightfully use the word.

Besides, whether you call them "diseases" or "disorders" or another term, there are many ways that our neurology can fail us. The "Classification" section of this Wikipedia article lists several major ones, but there's countless more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurological_disorder#Classific...

corporalagumbo• 13 years ago

Damn. That's gangster.

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

That's one billion Euros taxpayer money and you will not be reading the results in an open access journal any time soon.

neuroguy2• 13 years ago

From the website: http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ict_platform.html Neuroinformatics Platform, Brain Simulation Platform, Medical Informatics Platform

Extremely useful platforms that should be open. In addition to which I agree with you that they should allow access to their papers.

dalai4• 13 years ago

According to the work plan (not public as far as I know), all the platforms will be open to researchers not just from Europe but from anywhere in the world.

r_m_adler• 13 years ago

This sounds really interesting - I would definitely apply to work on such a thing. But I am scared away by the science career path. So optimistically you get to develop some neuro simulation code, maybe get a couple of papers out it. What do you do then? Who in industry hires people who worked on this kind of stuff? I'm not trying to be pessimistic - if I figure out a good idea then I'll go for it and apply.

apdavison2• 13 years ago

I know several people who have done PhDs in neural simulation and then gone on to work in industry (e.g. banking, IT consultancy).

I've also come across a couple of startups building on brain-inspired computing. The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Brain Corporation in San Diego http://www.braincorporation.com

nnq2• 13 years ago

At what resolution would you have to simulate the brain to get "human like" properties like consciousness? (quantum/subatomic? molecular? cellular? biologically inspired mathematical abstractions of neurons? simplest computationally useful mathematical abstractions of neurons - like current artificial nns?) - this is the question I find most interesting ..instead of unrealistic goals like predicting drug effects in-silico.

It would be helpful to run simulation algorithms with "tunable resolution" on supercomputers to see at what level the interesting properties appear. Though I have better hopes of seeing an answer to this question from the guys doing AI research than from a medical mega-research project or a collaboration... This is very different from the human genome project (where people alredy knew what information they needed and they put together resources to obtain it faster) that they try to imitate in the PR vids...

vannevar2• 13 years ago

I agree. To simulate the effects of a drug, you would need to simulate not only the neurons, but the circulatory system, the blood-brain barrier, perhaps even the immune system, and all of their respective interactions. Give the state of our knowledge, a massive publicly-funded project seems premature, like setting out to do the moon landing in 1870.

dalai4• 13 years ago

I don't know about that part of the project, but you could for example simulate the effect of the local interaction between a molecule and a neuron. The mechanisms to put the molecule there could be investigated separately.

> Give the state of our knowledge, a massive publicly-funded project seems premature

One billion might sound like bucket loads of money, but it is not. There are close to 90 institutions involved and a huge percentage of the funding will need to go to the platforms that need to built. This is more about building the necessary infrastructure to do higher-impact research.

nextparadigms• 13 years ago

It seems they gave another billion to graphene research:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/28/us-eu-science-idUS...

alimoeeny• 13 years ago

Personally, I believe it is too early for such large scale simulations, we have too many unknowns, that makes the simulation not worth the money,

The Human Brain Project

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