The “Blue Brain” project, an effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level, has been launched by IBM and the Brain and Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytecnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

Calling on a database of the neural architecture of the neocortex, they will map and model the behavior of neocortical columns.

In the second phase, which will take at least a decade to achieve, a molecular model of the neurons involved will be developed and they will clone the behavioral model of columns thousands of times to produce a complete neocortex — eventually, the rest of the brain — and stimulate it to see how different parts of the brain behave.