The project is led by the neuroscientist Henry Markram at the Swiss École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne. The purpose of the “Human Brain Project” is to simulate an entire human brain in a supercomputer within ten years. Although the data collected in the neurosciences is growing exponentially and knowledge regarding specific aspects of healthy and sick brains in different species and different age groups, according to the project’s initiators, despite this progress there is still no unified understanding of the brain and its various levels of organisation. Without such an understanding, it is difficult for pharmaceutical enterprises to develop drugs for cerebral diseases.
This shall now be facilitated by a supercomputer, which would simulate an almost complete human cerebrum within ten years. The simulation would provide international researchers with a tool that would integrate and make accessible all partial results from the disciplines neurobiology, neurophysiology, medicine, psychology, etc. Also, new supercomputing technologies, to be developed at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, are to be integrated using an unimaginable computing power. Neurochips will also be developed in Heidelberg to mimic the brain’s functions.
Sources:
http://www.spiegel.de/
http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/vision.html
Comprehensive report (German):
Human Brain Project. Die ultimative Simulation des Gehirns (2011). http://www.spektrum.de/