Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne computational neuroscientists hope to model a complete rat brain within two years on their IBM Blue Brain supercomputer and download it into a robotic rat to develop like a real rat–one with a “mind of its own.”

They also want to simulate what that brain experiences, and generate a movie of its reality rooted in the details of its brain.

Beyond that, they want to simulate the trillion synapses in the human brain–about 500 petabytes of data–within 10 years.