Billion-euro brain simulation and graphene projects win European funds
January 24, 2013
Neocortical column studied in Henry Markram’s Blue Brain project (Credit: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
The European Commission has selected the two research proposals it will fund to the tune of half-a-billion euros ($650 million U.S.) each, after a two-year, high-profile contest, Nature News reports.
The Human Brain Project, led by neuroscientist Henry Markram at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, plans to simulate the human brain in a supercomputer. (See “Brain in a box”).
The other project, called Graphene, is led by theoretical physicist Jari Kinaret at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. It will develop the potential of graphene — an ultrathin, flexible and conducting form of carbon — along with related materials for applications in computing, batteries and sensors.
The projects expect to receive €1 billion ($1.3 billion) over ten years, half to be provided by the European Commission and half by participants. The commission will make its formal announcement on Monday, 28 January.
The Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagship competition was launched in 2009 as a challenge to apply information and communication technologies to social problems. The Human Brain Project claims that it will aid medical advancement in brain disorders. Graphene claims it will lead to development of new materials that will revolutionize diverse industries.
Comments (28)
by Kb
What about some critical thinking fellas? As a cognitive scientist working for almost 20 years, I can’t see that functional reductionism has brought us any breakthroughs. This is just more of the same as strong AI of the 60′s and 70′s but with the wishful thinking that stronger computers will give us the answer. Almost makes you wanna wish that the answer will be 42.
All the new insights in the past decades have come from empirical lab work, such as Elizabeth Gould’s work showing adult neurogenesis and recent work showing the involvement of immune glia cells in pain. There is much more to learn on a basic level and this project is premature and will lead to the drying up of funds for programs that can actually advance our knowledge.
by Anthony
America is Sparta – War, War, War
Europe is Athens – Science, Art, Culture
by Antenna
Great ! So now this film project is getting really interesting : http://bluebrainfilm.com/bb/ The “Year 3″ episode already tells a lot about the different approaches, and why Markram’s one is better than Seung’s.
by Publius
So the EU places a half-billion Euro bet that Paul Allen’s lame and uninformed criticism of Ray’s singularity timeline is wrong. Care to call that bet, Mr. Allen??
by andmar74
Ah, but the blue brain project is about simulating the brain in the hope of finding out more about diseases. When turned on it will (probably) not suddenly become conscious. It’s just one step of many towards the Human-level AI, but an important one ( I think, difficult to say for a layman :-) )
by Whittaker
If something walks lke a brain and quacks like a brain, it is a brain.
by Whittaker
I mean, if we have a computer simulation of the brain that has sufficiently high definition, and include sufficiently large amount of details, won’t that be indistinguishable from a actual brain?
by andmar74
As I understand it, the blue brain is put together from data based upon many human brains, so it’s not a copy of one brain. That would probably mean that it doesn’t know anything, and needs to be trained like a baby. It’s far from clear that it can be trained.
Whittaker, you are right, but that is not the blue brain project.
by Ashley
Imagine how fast it would be trained though. A baby with access to the internet and perfect memory.
by Nebby1989
Check out the TED talk on the Blue Brain Project ( now known as the Human Brain Project). They do state that they hope to create a full working human brain. In the talk they mention how neurons use a set of algorithms in order to “know” how to connect with each other. Using these algorithms they can model the whole brain without having to copy any individual(s) brain(s). The talk was released a little over a year ago and the presenter stated that he hoped in 10 years they could have a hologram run by the artificial brain to talk to the audience.
by Heartland
Fantastic news. The knowledge of how the brain works is coming and, with it, knowledge of how intelligence works, which should be available well before the whole brain is mapped so probably before 2020.
by godot
Fantastic news! All humans being paid for intellectual or information processing endeavors will be obsolete by 2025. What are YOU going to do to support yourself, Mr. Naievete?
by Mr.X
By the way you (probably) perceived his comment, you should have been able to tell (believing in your perception) that he is not among those that would become obsolet.
No offense intended!
by Mr.X
* would become obsolet because of this.Menial workers may also become obsolet due to other developments.
by your name
These were the two projects I wanted to win. Nice.
by Percival
Henry Markram and his team are working hand in hand with IBM and its Blue Gene project. You could almost say that this funding insures that they will have a supercomputer running a full human brain simulation by the early 2020s.
by H.K. Fauskanger
I’ve been crossing my fingers for the Human Brain Project for over a year now, so this is a great relief! If one has a reductionist view of the brain (and I do), this painstaking bottom-up approach may finally give us fully conscious computers with human-level intelligence (or greater!) Will we see the “birth” of our long-awaited mindchildren in the 2020s?
by R. Wolf
Emphasis on the “may” and less on the ‘mindchildren’, that sounds a little kooky even for me, and I’m a huge fan of this project & the singularity community in general. This is certainly a step in the right direction, but even if totally successful it will only really be another tool in the toolbox for further research into brain function. We could tweak and test and change things to figure out how it all works to a deeper and more precise level than we can in real brains, but I imagine it would still be a while before we understand enough to really engineer intelligence, ramp up the parts that make it ‘smarter’ and have it really surprise us with super-human cognition. But totes cool nonetheless! Good to know other people are excited about this too.
by Vladislav
Yes, it is naive to expect that they will create an intelligent, conscious machine, it is more likely that the project can be seen as a turning point in time to a future better understanding of the brain.
by Mike
Very exciting news. Hopefully we will have a more robust understanding of how the mind works and what causes disease states instead of abstract theories.
Good to hear about graphene. Hope this material doesn’t end up being a let down though…..for continuing Moore’s law.
by Publius
So psyched HBP won! The Singularity is near!
by someday69
maybe this will spur,another big brain project in the states? Or china,,or japan’or……
by Jay
I had forgotten all about this. But I’m happen to see the money went to the brain project!
by sam
GREAT! much deserved, congrats Henry. Let’s see what you can do in 10 years with enough funds.
by JohnsonJohn
I was looking at this for the past year, waiting and re-checking every month to see if it was announced who won.
I said Graphene and BBP should win, and it did! Science has won this day.
by Editor
Agreed. These two research programs are directly targeted to accelerating intelligence.
by Gorden Russell
But why was there no mention that graphene will be used for reverse osmosis?
by John
AWESOME!! Go Team Henry!