

The Human Brain Project - snippyhollow
http://www.humanbrainproject.eu

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furbo
If that simulation would be conscious, wouldn't it be just as bad (if not
worse) as performing experiments on animals ? and if it wouldn't be conscious,
wouldn't it conflict with the beliefs of most scientists on the origin of
consciousness ?

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yk
If the HBP is really a success and the simulation is conscious, then the
simulation should probably get similar rights and protections as a human. (
Whatever freedom of movement means for a supercomputer is a rather interesting
additional question. ) And this would likely mean, that the possible
experiments on such a simulation need to be severely restrained. On the other
hand, if a sufficiently advanced simulation of the human brain would not be
conscious, then we run into trouble regarding the purely physical nature of
human brains.

However, I tend to think that a more rigid definition of consciousness is
needed ( and may well be one of the major results of the HBP). I think this,
because I am thinking about similar complex programs as a full brain
simulation, which demonstrate complex behavior, but no consciousness. ( For
example very detailed simulations of super nova explosions.)

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DanBC
> Modern computing technology has brought these goals within sight.

Haven't we been saying this since we had vacuum tubes and early chess
programs?

We thought machine vision would be easy and that turned out pretty tricky.

> ICT is ready to give us a completely new understanding of the brain and its
> diseases; understanding the brain will lead inevitably to radical innovation
> in computing.

I can't help feeling this is backwards. As we learn more about the brain our
simulations become better. But I'd be really interested in any computer
simulations that have improved our understanding of brain stuff.

~~~
dalai
> I can't help feeling this is backwards.

What they are trying to say is that we can put a lot more data into our
simulations and run them at different abstraction levels, which will help us
improve our understanding of the brain. This improved understanding can be
used for innovation in computing, e.g. through neuromorphic processors, see
[http://www.kip.uni-
heidelberg.de/cms/groups/vision/projects/...](http://www.kip.uni-
heidelberg.de/cms/groups/vision/projects/facets/) which is one of the project
partners.

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r_m_adler
This sounds really interesting - I would definitely apply to work on such a
thing. But I am scared away by the science career path. So optimistically you
get to develop some neuro simulation code, maybe get a couple of papers out
it. What do you do then? Who in industry hires people who worked on this kind
of stuff? I'm not trying to be pessimistic - if I figure out a good idea then
I'll go for it and apply.

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apdavison
I know several people who have done PhDs in neural simulation and then gone on
to work in industry (e.g. banking, IT consultancy).

I've also come across a couple of startups building on brain-inspired
computing. The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Brain Corporation
in San Diego <http://www.braincorporation.com>

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nnq
_At what resolution would you have to simulate the brain to get "human like"
properties like consciousness? (quantum/subatomic? molecular? cellular?
biologically inspired mathematical abstractions of neurons? simplest
computationally useful mathematical abstractions of neurons - like current
artificial nns?)_ \- this is the question I find most interesting ..instead of
unrealistic goals like predicting drug effects in-silico.

It would be helpful to run simulation algorithms with "tunable resolution" on
supercomputers to see at what level the interesting properties appear. Though
I have better hopes of seeing an answer to this question from the guys doing
AI research than from a medical mega-research project or a collaboration...
This is _very different from the human genome project_ (where people alredy
knew what information they needed and they put together resources to obtain it
faster) that they try to imitate in the PR vids...

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vannevar
I agree. To simulate the effects of a drug, you would need to simulate not
only the neurons, but the circulatory system, the blood-brain barrier, perhaps
even the immune system, _and all of their respective interactions_. Give the
state of our knowledge, a massive publicly-funded project seems premature,
like setting out to do the moon landing in 1870.

~~~
dalai
I don't know about that part of the project, but you could for example
simulate the effect of the local interaction between a molecule and a neuron.
The mechanisms to put the molecule there could be investigated separately.

> Give the state of our knowledge, a massive publicly-funded project seems
> premature

One billion might sound like bucket loads of money, but it is not. There are
close to 90 institutions involved and a huge percentage of the funding will
need to go to the platforms that need to built. This is more about building
the necessary infrastructure to do higher-impact research.

~~~
vannevar
If this is really just an umbrella term for a bunch of independent research,
that's different. The problem with a big project organization is that the
administrative overhead involved in coordinating all of those 90 institutions
will eat up valuable time and research dollars. And with no clear roadmap to
guide priorities, that overhead won't provide any benefit. There's too much
basic research left to be done before people start trying to coordinate on
building ambitious 'platforms'. Better to simply fund a broad range of
independent research and see what emerges.

~~~
dalai
The project is organized into different divisions and measures have been taken
to reduce the administrative overhead where possible. Having 50 small projects
does not reduce administrative costs, you would still have an enormous amount
of reporting, both financial and scientific to deal with (on the EU and on the
projects side).

> And with no clear roadmap to guide priorities, that overhead won't provide
> any benefit

But that is one of the purported advantages of a flagship project. You do have
a roadmap and a unifying goal that is provided by the project. Thus you can
avoid different institutions performing the same research over and over
without any concern to how this relates to previous results and other relevant
areas. The difference is that the roadmap is provided by the project instead
of the funding agency and as such there is more flexibility.

> building ambitious 'platforms'

To take one of the platforms as an example, the idea behind the brain
simulation platform is to be able to aggregate scientific data collected one
way or another (even outside the project) to build a simulation model. The
more data collected the better the model. Then scientists can come and test
their hypotheses or run scenarios. Based on the results the brain model may be
adjusted. The way I see it, this will be an evolving tool that will facilitate
basic research. I am not a neuroscientist so I can't really comment on whether
this tool makes sense or not.

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streptomycin
Why start with the human brain? Why not do something simpler first? We can't
even simulate the _C. elegans_ brain yet
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/88g/whole_brain_emulation_looking_at...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/88g/whole_brain_emulation_looking_at_progress_on_c/)
and that is ridiculously simpler than the human brain.

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neuroguy
From the FAQ - Why not begin with simple organisms like C.elegans?

There are two problems here. The first is feasibility; the second is the
relevance of our results. Feasibility. Neuroscientists have mapped all of
C.elegans’ 300 or so neurons. However, enormous amounts of key data needed are
still missing. For instance we do not have enough data on the physiology and
pharmacology of C. Elegans neurons and synapses. And we still have limited
data on the distribution of ion channels, receptors and other proteins on
neurons, synapses and glia. Without this data we cannot build unifying models.
A second problem is how easy it is to obtain the data. The crucial requirement
for unifying models is the ability to access the data needed. Obtaining a deep
understanding of the molecular machinery of a single neuron or a single
synapse is just as difficult in C. Elegans as in human beings. And many
datasets – particularly data on cognition - are actually easier to acquire in
rodents, or even in humans. So we can’t just say: “let’s do this quickly in
worms and do complex brains later”: we have to solve the same basic
challenges, whatever brain we model. What we are actually doing is building a
generic strategy we can use to reconstruct any brain.

Relevance: Studying the “simple” nervous systems of organisms like C.elegans
or drosophila, is obviously very important, particularly for molecular and
genetic studies. However the organization, electrophysiology and function of
the mammalian brain are quite different. One of the HBP’s most important goals
is to contribute to the development of new treatments for brain disease. But
pharmaceutical companies already have great difficulties in translating
results from mouse to human beings; with simpler organisms these problems
become much worse. If we want to make a real contribution to clinical
research, it is probably unwise to invest heavily in simple systems, so
distant from the human brain.

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pbw
So sure there are low-level details that must be understood for any brain, but
come on, 300 vs. 100B?

Once the big projects have cracked the low-level details, someone will figure
out C. elegans. Until we have some smaller organisms emulated, don't expect to
have a conversation with their emulated human brain, I just can't see that
happening out of order.

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jacquesm
It's simple, simulating C. elegans will not net you a billion in funding. It's
not sexy enough.

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streptomycin
If I was a billionaire, I'd spend a billion on that. It would be incredibly
sexy, that is, if it is possible given our current technology.

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vilqqu
The project received one billion euros funding today
[http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/doc/p...](http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/doc/press28jan13-01_en.pdf)

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jacquesm
That's one _billion_ Euros taxpayer money and you will not be reading the
results in an open access journal any time soon.

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neuroguy
From the website: <http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ict_platform.html>
Neuroinformatics Platform, Brain Simulation Platform, Medical Informatics
Platform

Extremely useful platforms that should be open. In addition to which I agree
with you that they should allow access to their papers.

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dalai
According to the work plan (not public as far as I know), all the platforms
will be open to researchers not just from Europe but from anywhere in the
world.

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devopstom
It'd be interesting if that page listed jobs at partner organisations.. I'd
love to be involved with a project like that, but it's difficult to get
involved.

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a-priori
Honestly, have you tried simply contacting the project? That's how I got an
internship on the Blue Brain Project a few years ago (and in fact have a cameo
in the video).

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nextparadigms
It seems they gave another billion to graphene research:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/28/us-eu-science-
idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/28/us-eu-science-
idUSBRE90R0HI20130128)

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jpwagner
I don't _necessarily_ doubt the scientists' competence here, but they're just
playing the fundraising game when they talk about "disease" in this context.

~~~
a-priori
I agree that the word "disease" is certainly overused these days, there are
still some things that should rightfully use the word.

Besides, whether you call them "diseases" or "disorders" or another term,
there are many ways that our neurology can fail us. The "Classification"
section of this Wikipedia article lists several major ones, but there's
countless more:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurological_disorder#Classific...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurological_disorder#Classification)

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alimoeeny
Personally, I believe it is too early for such large scale simulations, we
have too many unknowns, that makes the simulation not worth the money,

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corporalagumbo
Damn. That's gangster.

