Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Bringing a Virtual Brain to Life



         In 2006, scientist Dr. Markram has been trying to bring a virtual brain to life. Dr. Markram and his colleges have created a "brain" out of four vending-machine-sized boxes that each house thousands of microchips that are programmed to act like a brain. Instead of cells carrying information to and from the brain, the scientists used many cables. They named their creation "Blue Brain" and it has 10,000 virtual neurons that send signals across the cables. This January, the neuroscience project team received a grant of up to $1.3 billion to perfect this idea of a supercomputer-like virtual brain. With this grant, over 150 institutions will have the resources to enable them to further our education about the brain. It would give us insight into illnesses, disorders, and so many other mysterious things that people do not yet fully understand.

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4 comments:

  1. I never would have thought that someone would attempt to make a virtual brain. That is crazy. The logic to find out why we have certain diseases and such make sense to me though. When I first started reading I question why some one would need to make a virtual brain in the first place.

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  2. This sound crazy of making a virtual brain out vending machines and if it works; Dr. Markram should receive congrats.

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  3. My brain hurts thinking about how they would do this!

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  4. I like the idea of creating an artificial brain to research diseases but I hope this doesn't become the precursor to something like Skynet.

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