The Human Brain Project: You asked - we answer

Source: Nature

Some time ago on Habré a note was published about the possibilities of 3D SEM microscopy as applied to the study of the structure of the human brain within the European megaproject The Human Brain Project. Under the cut, we tried our best in detail - which means there will be a lot of text - to answer the questions asked, but we will begin in the tradition with some introduction.
Attention! There is a lot of text ahead

Foreword

As practice has shown the previous article and comments to it on three resources: HabraHabr , Nanometer.ru and Dirty . To clarify what the chemists, physicists, biologists, mathematicians, engineers, and programmers actually do as part of The Human Brain Project (HBP), I would like to first focus in more detail on the main goal of the project and the description of 12 subprojects Hbp
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The main purpose and objectives of HBP

Let's start with the global. So, HBP sets as its task nothing less than an understanding of the workings of the human brain. And if we can make this dream come true, then we will understand how to cure various diseases of the brain, we will be able to realize what makes us people, and also create revolutionary computer technologies.

A brief description of all 12 subprojects (a list of organizations working on their implementation is given at the end of each video):

SP 1 - Strategic Mouse Brain Data - The main objective of this project: to obtain all the missing basic information about the structure of the brain of mice and to simplify the comparison between the mouse brain and the human one.

In fact, part of this subproject on brain research using three-dimensional electron microscopy was analyzed in the previous article . As correctly noted in the comments to the post, the mice are able to solve simple puzzles, for example, purposefully press a button to get food or look for the shortest path in the maze with it.



SP 2 - Strategic Human Brain Data - Main objective: to obtain a multilevel set of data on the human brain, which is similar to data obtained for the brain of mice, and to simplify the use of data from the SP 1 project to predict processes in the human brain.

Thus, the project team will fill the void between the microscopic data obtained in the SP 1 project and the macroscopic data that can be obtained, for example, using MRI. Including it is planned to create a 3D “Google” -map of the brain, each user of which will be able to see where and what areas are located, how signal transmission occurs, and so on.



The user Habr vaborg let out that he was involved in an MRI project (SP2), so we ask him to write us more about brain research using MRI and NMR and the connection of this subproject with SP1 and SP3.

SP 3 - Cognitive Architectures - The main goal: a deeper knowledge of the cognitive architecture of the brain (sorry for the tautology), that is, how we read, how we recognize things, people, what is the motivation and how it works and so on.

In other words, these guys are engaged in determining which areas of the brain and how they interact with each other (for example, how visual or auditory information is processed, which parts of the brain are involved in this), that is, this is the classic “top-down” approach, unlike the first two - "bottom-up".



SP 4 - Mathematical and Theoretical Foundations of Brain Research - The main objective of the subproject: the development of theories, mathematical theories, which will form the basis of all further projects to create a brain model. In fact, this subproject is about how, knowing the structures of the brain at different levels, to build a unified mathematical model that also includes such an important property of the brain as flexibility.



SP 5 - Neuroinformatics is one of the main subprojects within the HBP. Its main goal is to organize and make as accessible as possible to neuroscientists the entire array of various data, knowledge and tools for studying the brain, which has been developed by an international team of scientists. In particular, to implement this, a web-site is already functioning, where you can, for example, look at the brain of a mouse and see which regions of the brain produce one or another protein.



More details on how data is collected and processed can be viewed on TED with Russian or English subtitles.



SP6 - Brain Simulation - The main goal of the subproject: to create such tools that will allow us, based on biological data, to carry out simulations, modeling of individual parts and even the whole brain. It will be an open platform. It is also possible that in modeling it will be possible to take into account the effects and interactions at the molecular level.



SP7 - High Performance Computing - This subproject aims to provide everyone involved in HBP with broad access to supercomputers, Big Data and cloud technologies, as well as support in visualizing, creating and simulating multilevel brain models, and so on.



SP8 - Medical Informatics - The main objective of the subproject: to develop methods that will detect diseases (this will include clinical and genetic data, MRI data collected in hospitals, etc.), as well as understand the symptoms of the disease and how it can be treated level



SP9 - Neuromorphic Computing - Within the framework of this subproject, it is planned to create, implement into production and develop configurable neuromorphic platforms and chips within which brain models developed in SP6 will sit. Each such chip, according to the authors, will work on the principle of mixing signals (actually an analog processor) and will contain up to four million neurons with billions of synaptic connections, which should ensure the speed of operation faster up to 10,000 times, compared to the ordinary brain.



SP10 - Neurorobotics - The goal of the subproject is to create a software and hardware platform that allows scientists to combine a proven model of the brain or its individual sections to the body of a robot to create neuromorphic robotic systems.



SP11 - Applications - this subproject is more interesting, most likely, for science fiction writers and futurologists, because it is in it that the concepts of Medicine of the Future are developed:



Neuroscience of the Future:



Computing Techniques of the Future:



SP12 - Ethics and Society - in fact, this subproject will be engaged in the development of ethical standards, the calculation of social consequences and potential risks from the entire HBP.

Actually the answers to the questions

After the publication of the first part of the article, we gave about a week so that everyone could express their questions and comments, after which they gathered everything together and began to cry were delighted with the incredible number of questions that came to us. After several sleepless weeks of searching for information, calling around neighbors and friends, we are still ready to provide answers.

Each question contains the nickname of the person who asked this question, so if you don’t want to read the whole thing, you can safely move on to the right answer. Also, some of the questions are combined, since the subject and purpose of the question are approximately the same (for example, consciousness vs brain simulation).

Habrahabr

Question from NadezdaSh :

The goal of the project is to create a single open platform for experiments with simulating the functions of the human brain, a single open framework. It will be possible to develop and new computer models of emulation, and test new methods of treatment of diseases.

From what has been described as a goal, it becomes unclear why it is possible to emulate a neuron in the gland, if it can be done programmatically. The goal is written to create an open framework.

In games, you can emulate the universe and flying to the stars, in low-level languages ​​to control the movement of bytes. Is it really impossible to programmatically emulate a neuron. Perhaps this is not the goal that the project pursues ...
1. Explain the main goal of the project. The goal - to make a new storage device?
2. How does neuron emulation allow to cure diseases? The human brain consists of a number of other parts, not just neurons. Besides the fact that there is still a body.

Similar questions from Dedushka_shubin:

1. What is the ultimate goal of the project? What is supposed to be the result?
2. (Answer 3) How important will this be for medicine and social sciences?

Answers:
1. The purpose of the project is precisely that stated: to create a single database of neural structures and mechanisms that apply to them, to simulate various neural connections in particular, and to reach the scale of the human brain as a whole. Simulation of neurons just happens programmatically, after careful study of what happens to neurons at the real micro and macro level. All accumulated data will be just in bytes, in the structures of the neural network, but at the same time, they are planned to be implemented within the framework of SP9 in hardware, in neuromorphic chips.

2. With the success of the project it will be a huge breakthrough in the field of medicine. Now patients with diseases associated with various brain lesions are treated with pills, although they have no idea exactly what they are affecting. When analyzing neural structures, it will be possible to see the disease “from the inside,” and to start from this, which must be changed at some level, in order for a person to become “healthier” (that is, more adequate according to generally accepted norms of society). For example, this video describes the potential benefits of studying the brain for medicine:



As for the social sciences, this is already a question of the interaction of different types of neural structures, roughly, different brains. This question is still premature enough to ask, and there is no stated goal of the project in this regard.

If it is interesting, then in open access there is a small simulator of the work of neurons at the membrane level, it is possible to build synoptic, ionic bonds in it, to process the system of spikes and so on.

3. All signals emanating from our body pass through brain processes. In the brain there is a physicochemical-electronic medium, which is part of the simulations. The models not only include the neurons themselves and their topology, but also suggest activity outside the neurons, in the environment where they are located.

About the interaction of the brain with muscles, you can watch this video with subtitles or in the original:



Question from Anc :

1. In such studies, the main point is to model real neurons. Will anyone in the project be engaged in the interpretation of the simulated processes? The first artificial neural networks were based on the assumption of the summation of incoming signals in a neuron. Then spike neural networks appeared. Neural networks with different effects on the result of input signals on dendrites or depending on the type of synapse are now born. Your research may well become the basis for new models of artificial neural networks.

A similar question asked waphyld :

Tell us about the criteria for comparing their models for compliance with a functioning brain. If there are any. In other words - how will they know when to stop?

2. What structural parts of the brain will be scanned, modeled, and distinguished in the design? Only neurons? Myelin? Glia? Blood vessels? The blood-brain barrier in general? Microtubules, layers of the neocortex, some part of the neocortex, or other parts of the brain?
3. Will the model be dynamic or static in terms of establishing new connections and dying off of old ones? After all, a huge number of synapses are established and ruptured in the brain during the day of the lived life.

Answer:
1. In order to build an adequate model of neural networks, each slice (slice) of the brain is subjected to a lengthy and tedious procedure of checks, emulations and regular checks. That is, electrodes and sensors are used to establish communication between individual neurons, which are implanted in certain areas of brain tissue. A certain impulse is applied to these electrodes and with the help of sensors the direction of propagation of impulses is recorded.

Then it is transferred to a specific model and a simulation of a similar stimulating effect on the models is carried out. If everything works well, then this part is left, if not, then new experiments are conducted with brain tissue. Thus, computer results are compared with the actual response of neurons in the brain. Naturally, the same procedure is performed several times for the same areas in order to obtain statistically correct results.

2. It is not possible to model everything at once. At first it will be only neurons, as the main cells and structures involved in information processing, and by and large only the neocortex, the latest in terms of the evolution of the part of the brain that determines our thought processes.

As for simulations, the third or fourth level is the construction of neural networks, where the neuron is considered as a whole, without further scaling, that is, a neuron and certain connections with other neurons - the network. And already on the basis of this, 75 million neural networks can be simulated easily. But this is a completely different topic: this is called the NEST simulator , and it is also part of our Blue Brain Project.

3. At the moment, only static links are considered. When simulations on existing models reach a certain level of excellence, you can start talking about changing relationships. Before running ahead, you must first establish the valid results of current tests. Now the largest model in the research is calculated within 12.5 milliseconds of real time. I do not think that changes in connections on such a scale are very relevant to consideration.

Question from whileNotFalse :

At what level do you model neurons: on a detailed physical or abstract functional? Perhaps there are some analogies and interesting facts about the work of neurons?

Answer:
How neurons are simulated: first, mouse slices (subproject SP1) use neuron topologies using automated microscope complexes. In principle, such work can be carried out automatically, but so far it is in its infancy (see the previous article on 3D reconstruction of the brain). So now it is done in a mixed mode: manually plus some automatic processing / correction / post-processing. Photos and accuracy of such maps are determined by the high resolution of microscopes. Further, as noted above, the testing of connections between neurons occurs by applying electrical impulses to the corresponding areas of brain tissue.

Secondly, data from other subprojects help to understand the role of certain areas of the brain. As a result, at the output we have a copy of the neural network, which is built as a physical copy of the real brain with the functionality assigned to it.



Question from esir_pavel :

What worries me is this question. The project The Human Brain aims to create a model of a whole brain. And further, using this model, what the fantasy wishes, even to simulate neurodegenerative diseases and test drugs for them, even to model consciousness.

It is clear that computational drug testing requires biologically plausible neuron models, such as Hodgkin-Huxley . But as far as consciousness is concerned, there is such a premonition that it can be modeled using much simpler neuron models that do not take into account all physiological features, like Izhikevich’s phenomenological model.
...
Therefore, my question in the refined version is: “Is the Human Brain being used to study the possibility of realizing a strong or at least weakly conscious being based on simple phenomenological, non-physiological models of neurons as part of the project?”

Also kvz asked similar questions:

1. Is it planned to further try to model consciousness, based on the results of this project, or is it a completely different kind of research? If yes, then from the outside it looks like if we looked at the magnetic hard disk drives under a microscope and cut the processor with nano-knives in order to understand how Windows XP works.

andreyis:

The question of the human brain is always a question of consciousness. How is consciousness born? Where is the place where meaning goes into action?

wilderwind:

Is it possible to programmatically model the evolution of the emergence of consciousness?
Is it possible, the way to create artificial intelligence through the independent evolution of software?

And M_Romul :

If I am not mistaken, the HBP intentions declaration stated that the goal is a simulation of the work of the brain (um) of a person WITHOUT a simulation of consciousness. How so? If um of a person works entirely, there will be consciousness. Bioethics insisted on such a formulation? And yes, will the simulation work in real time? Who is the donor who gave you the brain? His gender / age / culture? It will be considered as loading of consciousness when everything will turn out?

2. There are two large state-level projects - The Human Brain Project and Blue Brain Project. However, it seems that all of them are associated with the study of primarily biological and chemical processes of the brain using various microscopes and other measuring equipment. Are large grants allocated specifically for the simulation of consciousness? Scientists in what direction is closer in their specialty to modeling consciousness as an information shell (and not at the level of a biological structure) - Computer Science or Neuroscience?

Long and tedious answer:
1. Consciousness is a side effect, but in no way an advanced, priority goal of HBP. Consciousness is like seeing what is happening on the monitor screen, while not understanding what the stuffing of the computer is made of - here you are absolutely right. In HBP, roughly speaking, they are building various systems of the very stuffing (separately CD, processor, memory), and only then various configurations can be assembled from them.

Or another example of how medicine was created. For a long time, people and had no idea about the DNA, the causes of disease, and so on, but were treated, cut, bleeding involved. And now we have access to molecular medicine, when an effective medicine or candidates for them can be calculated on a computer, DNA therapy, the cultivation of organs and tissues, as well as cloning. HBP - an attempt to skip the "Middle Ages" in the understanding of the principles of the brain for 10 years.

The project is based on the goal of studying the mechanisms of neuro-physico-chemical interaction of neurons between themselves and the environment. This is the very basis that can provide answers to fundamental questions about the work of the neurons themselves. The brain is a biological structure, which, in fact, is studied in HBP, and consciousness is a side effect of the evolutionary complication of this biological structure. At some point in time, the brain of our distant ancestors had to start processing all the growing volumes of information, and evolution had found an excellent mechanism for this — neocortex columns, which actually work as cores in our multi-core brain, and only then the consciousness developed on the basis of this evolutionary tricks.


A source

It’s still too early to talk about consciousness in this context, for now we only want to learn how to simulate brain activity. But, if it, consciousness, depends only on neural, synaptic and molecular interactions, it will certainly appear as a side effect of more and more complex interactions of neurons in large numbers. If so, then we ourselves will witness its occurrence from the moment of the simulation of quite complex neural structures, allowing to achieve a certain level of development of brain activity.

The question of artificial intelligence (AI) is directly correlated with the question of consciousness. What people now call AI is an attempt to come up with a formula for pseudo-consciousness, and to fit it into general cases. For BBP, the problem is absolutely the opposite: to create structures, the complication of which may lead to AI simulation to one degree or another, or it will give a great development to already existing AI subsystems. But this approach from the bottom, though much more time consuming, is much more fundamental and correct. We do not use phenomenological constructions for this.

Of course, the creation of artificial intelligence through the independent evolution of software is exactly what we all expect from HBP, but only after scientists understand the principles of the brain and learn at least to simulate it using the simplest examples.

Moreover, it has not yet been proved that all neural structures will be sufficient for self-consciousness. So ethically it can be easily circumvented using this statement of the statement. As for how it will be in reality, it seems that so many are running ahead. No one knows yet what they will have to face until neuron models appear that are close to a real human brain, in which there are 300 billion neurons. Simulation calculations will be closer to real time, and then ahead of them, because no one will give up faster calculations.

For the simulation, the human donor, as such, is not needed, since our brain works according to certain algorithms for 90% of the same for all people.
You can, for example, refer to this lecture :



What is meant by loading consciousness? Consciousness itself is conscious at some stage: it is either there or not. Be sure that the times are not far off when people with transparencies will stand on the streets “do not touch the T2030 model, it has realized itself” - although this is just a simulation, and the edge is very thin there.

And once again, the question of the brain and consciousness is even more a philosophical question than a scientific one. Who can answer: Do animals have a consciousness if they themselves cannot tell us about it?

For example, in this video it is stated that if a living being has a connection between the brain stem and the cerebral cortex, then such an animal has self-awareness, is able to memorize and reproduce patterns:



As for the meaning, it, the meaning, goes into action all in the same biological structure, the brain that receives the input signal, “evaluates” it - interprets it - and gives some output information, for example, that it is necessary to rearrange the leg from position A to position B.

And this long answer I would like to finish the TED-lecture of one of the ideologists of the project - Henry Markram. It is worth noting that for the entire lecture, he never mentioned consciousness - consciousness, only perception - feeling, perception:



I also advise you to refer to the TED lecture series “How does my brain works?” , I highly recommend to see 1,2 and 6,7 lectures.

2. Blue Brain Project - a purely Swiss project, which at one time was the impetus for the adoption of the program The Human Brain Project. The main goal of both projects is to understand how the brain works and how it works, the question of consciousness is secondary, because consciousness is the highest degree of brain development. Not understanding how the brain works at the level of biochemistry, we are simply not able to build an adequate model of any consciousness, except for phenomenological ones.

As for what is more, it is rather Neuroscience with the support and active participation of Computer Science.

Questions from CompleteBrains sent by mail:

1. Are there any ways for one person to remotely contribute to the project? Jobs at HBP involve moving to Switzerland, as I understand it?
Also, in the section www.humanbrainproject.eu/participate said about the possibility of cooperation with organizations. Perhaps I can at least join such an organization and thus contribute?

Similar question from hidoba:

As a volunteer to participate in the project? Even with half a year of participation at their own expense.

2. The most important question: is it possible, starting from the developer’s point of view, to go deeply into the subject and begin to contribute directly to research, and not just to the creation of software models? Is HBP an appropriate place for such development, or is science and development strongly separated there (because the project is huge, for example)?

3. There are many subprojects in HBP and therefore it is not easy to isolate a common gist. I'm interested in, does HBP aim to learn and recreate the principles of the mind in any form or only human? That is, purely hypothetically, will it be possible within the framework of this project to create the beginnings of intelligent intelligence, but different from human, if this is appropriate? Or is the project limited only to what relates to the person, his features and problems? : : - ? , .

4. , ? (Linux, English intermediate, fluent) (Game Engines, 3D Graphics, GPGPU). , , ? - , «Experienced» «Expert» .

5. , , , ? ? .

6. , , : C++ C# (Mono, Interop)? , . , ? ? .

Answer:
1. The Human Brain Project is a project throughout Europe, including also several institutions in the United States and Japan. You do not have to come to Switzerland to participate, where the Blue Brain Project is headquartered. These administrative issues are preferably addressed with the relevant department of administration or personnel department.

2. Of course, everything is possible. But the development and research are closely related, one can not without the other. People coming to the developer positions, it used to go entirely into research. The same situation as elsewhere.

3. HBP is aimed at the human brain, but, of course, on the way to this goal will be used all models of lower brain evolution, starting with mice. As for the “other”, non-human, reason, there is no such goal, but quite the opposite - the goal of correcting the problems of existing brain activities.

4. Why guess? Send a resume for the vacancy, and it will be visible. There are not so many candidates for positions, because finding a good specialist with the right skills is very difficult. We receive resumes from different parts of the world, but for some reason, none of the Russian-speaking countries specifically. Perhaps some kind of effort needs to be made by our PR team in order for the project to be more recognizable in countries where they speak Russian. We have a lot of smart and skilled developers. On the other hand, without good English it will be quite difficult to get into the project, but it’s worth a try.

5. The project is developing, vacancies are being updated, and subprojects are growing. So again - why guess, send a summary.

6. Of course, in terms of programming, the project uses various types of languages, even those that you don’t really hear about among the majority of developers. Support, refactoring - all these are the pressing problems of all coders, as in any other company. We are also struggling to improve the code and optimize it. Of course, this is one of the key parts of the project. Otherwise, how can simulate neurons in real time with less memory (and used on lshim number of neurons, respectively). To do this, there is a special team High Performance Computing - Software Engineers.

Question from kvz :

What looks more promising now - to simulate an artificial mind based on the biological structures of living beings or on a super computer consisting of classical electronic components?

Answer:
What does it mean to model artificial intelligence based on biological structures? Grow something containing DNA? It is quite difficult to crank, primarily because of the irreproducibility of one-to-one biological objects. It is much more difficult to do this than, for example, to build biomorphic systems in iron. For example, in the framework of SP9, a project of a neuromorphic chip is created, which will work faster than the biological analog by orders of magnitude. Therefore, it is more promising, while spying on Nature, to transfer everything to the existing component base.


A source

Questions from SAKrisT :

1. 3D ?
, , , .
2. - ? , . . , .

Answer:
1. For this, MRI and NMR tomography are just needed, but using the described method (3D FIB / SEM) this cannot be done, since the ion beam removes part of the brain tissue, and the tissue itself requires some sample preparation and fixation.

2. Again, this is a question for MRI and functional MRI. Get down to the scanner and learn the words, for example. Speaking of languages, the people have already done this. The sample is really a few people but still. The idea is this: how people learn words and languages. Three groups: bilinguals (i.e. a two-language environment since birth), children who began to learn a language at an early age and at a later age. The result: a normal brain in the first and second groups of children and an enlarged part on the left, seemingly, somewhere near the cerebellum in the third. We need to find a link to this study ...

Essentially, the question asked: it is difficult for me to imagine right now that we can check it in a living organism at the level of neurons or their rebuilding, as we learn, remember - in vivo , as they say. We can get closer with this or that trick, but the possibilities of science, unfortunately, are limited.

Question from user Nashev (on engine9 comment ):

“I consider it necessary to mention a project that attracts volunteer forces to build a model of neural connections through a game ”

Reference: EyeWire - a project to study the human retina by volunteer forces. The project was created as a result of cooperation between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Institute of Medical Research. Max Planck

But the question in the Blue Brain Project is whether they know about this project and what do they think about it?
Are you ready to catch up / overtake / support / adopt methods? Do they work more precisely / coarser, etc.?

Answer:
BBP will soon launch a project called “Adopt a Neuron”, where everyone can take part in the construction of biologically realistic neurons. This is similar to the SETI project, where the users who installed the application help calculate signals from space. In the same way, everyone will be able to “adopt” a neuron for its construction and analysis in the “screen saver” mode.

Dirty

Question from BbIBuX:

And what are the prospects for building a biological processor?

Answer:
It depends on what the biological processor means. If it is biomorphism, that is, imitation of living Nature, then SP9 (neuromorphic chips) is aimed at this. If this is a processor that runs on DNA, RNA or proteins, then this topic is unlikely to be promising.

In principle, you can give the answer of one of the ideologists of the project:



Simply put, our brain receives information, even when processing the previous one, the idea of ​​“liquid computing” (computing on transient states) is to build in some sense an analog computer that processes information in any given time interval (that is, in real time), and not bars, as now.

Question from father_gorry:

1. , , , . ? , ?

2. ? –, — , , , .

Answer from the user of neuroscience:
You have already got far. Adaptive function of the brain, of course, is important, but it is not as critical as understanding the basic principles of the brain. That is, it may be within the framework of HBP that there will be a study of the formation of new neural links, but for now this is pointless. Think of the brain as just another organ, as the heart, for example, the most complex mechanism, but you can create a simulation, not taking into account all internal and external factors.

A rough experiment - “there is a 3D model of all neurons and synapses of the anterior surrounding gyrus with the prescribed biochemistry. With the introduction of substance A into the synaptic cleft - 6% of the neurons died, the activity of the others increased. ”And then the laboratory assistant sits and draws conclusions - what it was all about.

The brain is rebuilt and adapted in response to biochemistry, not information.

That is, your question is “how to reorganize my brain if I was told“ goat! ”In a tram,” the answer is “in no way”. He will process the information and allocate something to himself, and already this selected will jam, develop and in every possible way rebuild the bricks in his head.

Question from Lukashenko:

What area of ​​the brain is responsible for feeling shame?

Answer:
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex. You don't need a BBP to find out .

Question from ksotar:

Is there any initial impulse that triggers brain activity? If so, where does it come from?

Answer:
There is no such impulse as there is no, for example, an impulse for a person to start breathing. As soon as the simplest neural structure appears, it is already functioning. And what decisions at the simplest level are made there is a separate issue.

Question from B0gger:

1. Will it be possible to count a verse that was learned once from the very brain of the map of which you are doing? Or some emotions, hatred of blacks, for example?

2. If the brain remembers information by creating a neural network , forming a connection, does this mean that the practice of cryonics will work? Is the whole personality and memory in the connectome, or is it coded somehow, in some clever microtubules or quantum states of the atoms that make up the brain?

Answer:
1. So far, unfortunately, this brain (or rather its individual pieces) cannot read. But, in principle, in the future, it is quite possible, because the whole brain will be implemented on a virtual level, connect and watch, read.

2. Theoretically this is possible. There is no need to go far for examples . Potentially, proper freezing should not break anything, break the connections between neurons, and so on. And all your memories are only brain biochemistry, which is fixed during cryonic freezing and can be restored.

Question from sometimes:

What are the main areas of research? For example, biochemistry, neural network structure or something else?
Will the influence of surfactants on consciousness and its mechanisms be considered?

Answer:
The main directions are all biological, chemical, physical processes occurring between neurons. Defining activities and building models with already known mechanisms. Ideally, everything that is known about neurons and their behavior in a particular environment and with certain criteria is taken into account.

We don’t know anything about surfactants ( psycho-active substances ), but one of the projects is aimed at studying the effect of medical preparations for brain therapy; probably, surfactants will be studied as part of this study, as the surfactants themselves are nothing but neuro-mediators .

Question from KUTKI:

At what level of the structure of matter are the first signs of consciousness manifested, and not as a mental-social phenomenon, but as a primary elementary subjective reaction to the world around us, the separation of the external and the internal. Is there a qualitative leap in the formation of such a consciousness in animals, for example, is it inherent exclusively in highly developed animals, or in animals the simplest nervous system? Is it possible to isolate the very essence, removing all unnecessary?

Are the quantum-mechanical properties of matter the basis for the existence of consciousness, or, theoretically, it is possible to create absolutely identical system emulation on future super-computers?

Answer:
Many questions about consciousness have already been there, as well as answers that remain approximately the same: so far no one has been able to model quite complex neural structures in order to witness the initial appearance of consciousness. And this is on condition that the neural structures and processes in them are all that is needed for consciousness. Therefore, it is too early to talk about this. We can judge the consciousness so far on the basis of the available surface data.

The quantum-mechanical question is unlikely to be considered, because there is nothing “divine” (spiritual, universal) in the mind itself, as some believe. This is just an idea from the category of misunderstanding that there may be something more complicated than human consciousness. And it necessarily is, we ourselves take part in it, evolving. Of course, no one denies that consciousness, as it is, will be achievable with time for simulation. The only question is time and ethics.

Question from red_ostrich:

What is the proportion of scientists from different areas in the Blue Brain Project? Is there a proportion of people involved in the theory, or is there mainly a focus on the analysis and description of experimental data? Who designs the experiments and how does it go? At what level do you need to study biology, some math (or physics, or CS specialist) to participate in the project?

Answer:
Most scientists are engaged in theory and model building. Although the project itself is, first of all, neuroscience, and only then computational. In terms of programming, there is a high-performance computing team, a visualization team, and a platform building team (the largest of all computing ones). Some knowledge of neuro-processes needs to be acquired even by the guys from CS at the beginning of work, but all this is quickly understood at an abstract level. The main thing is to always have a mediator between calculators and theorists, for these parties are not always able to find an equal language for work.

By the way, a fairly large group of scientists is engaged in the neuro-form robotic SP10.



Question from vsh:

Can you briefly describe the model you use to simulate? Tell me, are there any things that she for some reason does not take into account, and would you prefer to take them into account?

Answer:
Unfortunately, we can not, all models in the BBP are under the NDA. However, you can read about the mechanisms that are part of the models ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) without any problems.

Question from X5robot:

Is it possible now to estimate how energy-consuming the analogue will be?

Answer:
If the energy expended on the simulation itself is meant, then even this parameter is difficult to determine (there are estimates in gigawatts of electricity and billions of euros in investment). Taking current models and current machines is not entirely fair, since the energy consumed is now more for fewer neurons, plus a new generation of supercomputers will consume less electricity, and ideally the entire human brain should be simulated on a 20 megawatt data center.

Nanometer

Question from Shepherd Evfgrafovich:

And you can transfer the model of a neuron to a model of any human organization, replacing axons like a telegraph link. How many people will be required for such a model? Or at least for one synaptic vesicle? If, of course, there is at least some program that simulates its behavior? Will there be enough for this ordinary sports stadium? And why not, if the ant's brain consists of only about 250 thousand neurons ...

Answer:
The neuron model can be transferred to anything, but why? At the moment, the goal is to study the very neurons and their connections, and then, after building the corresponding mathematical models, they can be transferred to almost anything.

If we have missed something, you can always contact the FAQ of the project itself.

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And at the end of this slightly narrated story, another fun, fun video from TED with subtitles and in the original:



PS: We understand the text is impressive, it is difficult to verify everything with jewelery accuracy, but if you find a mistake, please write in PM.

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Sometimes briefly, and sometimes not so much about the news of science and technology, you can read on my Telegram channel - welcome;)