Mouse brain simulated on computer

Mouse brain simulated on computer

news.bbc.co.uk

US researchers have simulated half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer.

The scientists ran a "cortical simulator" that was as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer.

Half a real mouse brain isa thought to have about eight million neurons each one of which can have up to 8,000 synapses, or connections, with other nerve fibres.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.llnl.gov
www.unr.edu
www.almaden.ibm.com

I know mouse brain is smaller then human brain, but I find this story very interesting and amazing - if there is such a supercomputer out today, which can simulate half of a brain of a mouse which has 8 million neurons then there is only a matter of time, when there shall be such a supercomputer available, which will be able to perform a "cortical simulation" of a human brain. The only problem is, that human brain is probably the most complex organ in the human body which has some one hundred billion neurons, which are capable of electrical and chemical communication with tens of thousands of other nerve cells.

Now that is a tiny bit more then a mouses brain.

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Nice find Souljah

I find this amazing:

The team, from the IBM Almaden Research Lab and the University of Nevada, ran the simulation on a BlueGene L supercomputer that had 4096 processors, each one of which used 256MB of memory.

Wow, that much power needed to simulate 1/2 a mouse brain. Nature is truly amazing!

Originally posted by djohnsto77
Wow, that much power needed to simulate 1/2 a mouse brain. Nature is truly amazing!

Now all this immense power of the supercomputer was used only for ten seconds at a speed ten times slower than real life to simulate brain of a tiny mouse. It might not seem much - but I think it is a great start.

Well, I ran the output of the cortical simulator through a special software integration program, and based upon that, here are the output results of a likely recipient:




Sorry, couldn't resist. Good find, Souljah.