Blue Brain Project. The Blue Brain Project is a Swiss brain research initiative that aims to create a digital reconstruction of rodent and eventually human brains by reverse-engineering mammalian brain circuitry.
The project was founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. Its mission is to use biologically-detailed digital reconstructions and simulations of the mammalian brain to identify the fundamental principles of brain structure and function. There are a number of sub-projects, including the Cajal Blue Brain, which is coordinated by the Supercomputing and Visualization Center of Madrid (CeSViMa), and others run by universities and independent laboratories. Goal[edit] Progress[edit] In November 2007,[7] the project reported the end of the first phase, delivering a data-driven process for creating, validating, and researching the neocortical column. By 2005, the first cellular model was completed. Funding[edit] Related projects[edit]
Fragment of rat brain simulated in supercomputer. A simulated brain slice from the Blue Brain Project: neurons are coloured according to their levels of electrical activity.
A controversial European neuroscience project that aims to simulate the human brain in a supercomputer has published its first major result: a digital imitation of circuitry in a sandgrain-sized chunk of rat brain. The work models some 31,000 virtual brain cells connected by roughly 37 million synapses. The goal of the Blue Brain Project, which launched in 2005 and is led by neurobiologist Henry Markram of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), is to build a biologically-detailed computer simulation of the brain based on experimental data about neurons' 3D shapes, their electrical properties, and the ion channels and other proteins that different cell types typically produce (see ‘Brain in a box’).
Such a simulation would provide deep insights into the way the brain works, says Markram. But Markram is undeterred. How to Upload Your Mind. Brain Simulation. Would it be evil to build a functional brain inside a computer? Of course, the elephant in the room is the Simulation Argument.
If we can, in fact, simulate a "human brain" in an electronic environment, simulate reality and interaction, then it becomes highly likely that we are, ourselves, such simulations. But it remains to be seen that consciousness is substrate independent. It's not that I think it's not, it's that we literally have insufficient data to make that call right now.
If, in fact, consciousness is substrate independent, then the Simulation Argument becomes very strong. And, of course, one must define consciousness before one can grant rights to 'anyone who possesses it'. You’ll Probably Never Upload Your Mind Into A Computer. Responce to You'll Probably Never Upload... HBP to simulate full mouse brain by 2020, full human brain by 2024. : Futurology. Post-Singularity mind kidnapping. How to escape when your mind has been stolen and uploaded onto a hardware you can't control... : singularity. When Facebook Resurrected the Dead. Pandemonium Explains Why Computers Will Share Human Biases. How Will Humans Respond to Immortality? Thanks for the responses!
What really drives resource consumption instead is rising standards of living. But rising everyone standards of living is good because it is very strongly correlated with increases in women's social, economic and political rights, improvements in people's eductation, a vast reduction in infant mortality and huge reduction in birth rates. I agree! But this is only feasible IF humanity has reached a state of true global equality and IF these technologies are accessible by all. If not, what you'll have is a subset of society with ridiculous life-spans, Let's say we have reached a truly peaceful state of equality for humankind.
I am not by any means mentioning all of this as a reason not to achieve or attempt to achieve world peace! All this is independent of whether a cure to aging or rejuvenation exists or not. Bear in mind, I'm thinking of this in an ultra-futuristic way, not in a “30 or 40 years from now we'll have a 10-yr life expectancy increase way”.