In a huge first for science, researchers have cracked the code of a rat’s brain – sort of. The neocortex is located in the rat’s primary somatosensory cortex, which is responsible for receiving sensory information. The simulation revealed a complex nervous system along with its network of brain cells.
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The Blue Brain Project through animal experiments aims to reverse engineer human brains, so that they could digitally reconstruct the brain in a computer. The reconstruction encompasses 30,000 neurons and almost 40 million of synapses from a rat brain part, which is no larger than a third of a millimeter. This new study is also considered to be the most detailed brain model yet, calling it “virtual brain slice”.
Human Brain Project is a 10-year European research program investing more than $1 billion.
While this is in no way proof that the Human Brain Project will be successful, it’s an exciting step forward to scientists that could be big dividends down the line – and it’s certainly a major milestone for the project, and one that signals it could possibly work.
The hottest investigation is earned from the Blue Brain Project, which generally strives to effectively digitalize the mouse grey matter and ultimately contain only the breakthrough in to share mind into a working laptop or computer. It does not include gia-the brain’s non-neuronal cells-or blood vessels.
When the reconstruction was finished, the researchers employed potent supercomputers to simulate the neurons’ behaviours under various conditions. Markram said the study does not yet prove the principle that scientists are capable of reconstructing a human brain virtually with 85 billion or more functioning brain cells. According to reports by EurekAlert, the Blue Brain Project researchers plan to continue exploring the state-dependent computational theory while improving the model they’ve built. Researchers found that changing the level of calcium ions – which play a role in neurotransmission – was key to producing changes in brain activity. Building on this early success, the team hopes to one day be able to recreate the entire rat brain. Further, it also helps in predicting the numbers, location, and even the quantum of ion currents that pass through the 40 million synapses.
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The leader of the two projects is Henry Markram, professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, declared this year that he and his 81 colleagues finally constructed the scheme of a fully functional part of the brain of 30,000 neurons. Contrary to a few concerns, it does not represent an effort to “upload a human personality to a computer”, as the New York Times put it.
