A recent article on the WSJ (In Search for Intelligence, a Silicon Brain Twitches) reviews the Blue Brain project based at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. The Blue Brian project, led for the last four years by Henry Markram, has focused in building a biologically accurate rat cortical column.

The effort is complicated by the high granularity of the simulation: a rat’s NCC is comprised of about 10,000 neurons and their 10 million connections. This might not seem overwhelming even for nowadays desktops, but the amount of details incorporated in each neuron requires to use a Blue Gene (from which the name, Blue Brain project…) supercomputer to run the simulation, and another one… to visualize the results of each run!

The article provides a brief overview of the other projects, complementary to SyNAPSE, that are tackling the task of building sophisticated models of animal neocortex, and in particular chips that mimic the architecture and functioning of neurons (the latter is NOT the target of Markram’s project). For instance, the Chinese government is funding with $1.5 million a project aimed at creating an artificial-brain robots with microcircuits that evolve, learn and adapt to real-world situations. The European Union is funding researchers at Sensopac with a grant of €6.7 million ($9.3 million) to built part of an artificial mouse brain.

Developing sophisticated brain-based technologies is certainly a priority for developed countries to maintain their technological edge, and investments are probably going to increase in the next few years to accelerate the advances in these exciting technologies.