In my recent post, I commented on IBM’s announcement at the Supercomputing Conference (SC09) in Portland, Ore., that they had simulated a brain with the number of neurons and synapses present in a cat’s brain. It looks like the controversial statement of IBM being finally able to “simulate a cat’s brain” (or however their original statements has been distorted) has been stirring some more comments. Henry Markram, the leader of the Blue Brain project at EPFL, Lausanne, sent an open letter to IBM CTO Bernard Meyerson, along with several media (UK Daily Mail, Die Zeit, Wired, Discover, Forbes). One big question is: was Modha’s statement somehow distorted? Did he actually simply claim that IBM simulated a system that has the same number of neurons of a cat, as opposed to simulate “the cat’s brain?”. This is an important distinction. Anyway, Neurdons must know, so here it is! Enjoy!