

'Blue Brain' project accurately reconstructs brain circuit from model - ChuckMcM
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120917152043.htm

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ChuckMcM
This will be a fun one to watch. For those of you who don't know about these
guys this team at EPFL is 'working backwards' starting from the ground up to
re-create a neural model using what we know about how neurons grow in brains.

I met a grad student from one of these projects at a party once and it is a
fascinating approach. If they are able to create an accurate model it will
help them understand how real brains work and give them tools for analyzing
both the impact of damage to the brain and identify signals of damage which
might be to subtle for an MRI to catch.

Not going to build an android like Mr. Data on Star Trek for a while yet but
it is one possible approach.

~~~
jcr
Their publications:

<http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page-52755-en.html>

I think sciencedaily.com might be a year late?

[http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/files/content/sites/bluebrain/files...](http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/files/content/sites/bluebrain/files/Scientific%20Publications/PNAS-2011-Markram-1016051108.pdf)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Interesting, ScienceDaily reported on this press release:

[http://actu.epfl.ch/news/blue-brain-project-accurately-
predi...](http://actu.epfl.ch/news/blue-brain-project-accurately-predicts-
connections/)

Which is dated today.

~~~
jcr
Well that's strange. Looking at publications/citations of H. Markham on Google
Scholar doesn't have anything recent along the lines of that press release.

[http://scholar.google.com/citations?sortby=pubdate&hl=en...](http://scholar.google.com/citations?sortby=pubdate&hl=en&oe=ASCII&user=W3lyJF8AAAAJ&view_op=list_works)

Maybe someone has a moth between their vacuum tubes? ;)

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femto
It seems the simulation is running on an open source engine [1], and "The
source code will be made available on the Blue Brain website" [2]. Does anyone
know whether the exact code and models, as run, is available? It'd be
interesting to take a peek at it.

[1] <http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/>

[2]
[http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/files/content/sites/bluebrain/files...](http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/files/content/sites/bluebrain/files/Scientific%20Publications/2009_King_A%20component-
based%20extension%20framework.pdf)

