Soon to be lame duck administration to back brain mapping initiative

[Wade]

Obama to Back Brain Mapping | The Scientist Magazine®

I tried to think of a snappy remark on this story but couldn't come up with one. Maybe this initiative will help find out why.

 

[Wade]

Can We Map the Brain? - To the Point on KCRW

 

[5tomidnite]

Obama to Back Brain Mapping | The Scientist Magazine®

I tried to think of a snappy remark on this story but couldn't come up with one. Maybe this initiative will help find out why.

Well it does throw into doubt previous mind control conspiracies if they are only really trying to map the brain now...or does it?

 

[mike]

Its being done by multiple projects

Blue Brain Project

As of August 2012 the largest simulations are of mesocircuits containing around 100 cortical columns (image above right). Such simulations involve approximately 1 million neurons and 1 billion synapses. This is about the same scale as that of a honey bee brain. It is hoped that a rat brain neocortical simulation (~21 million neurons) will be achieved by the end of 2014. A full human brain simulation (86 billion neurons) should be possible by 2023 provided sufficient funding is received.

Videos here

The Brain According to Henry Markram (Video) | Singularity Hub

 

[mike]

Markram's team is, in fact, not the only one trying to build an artificial brain, although he is probably in the lead. At the University of Manchester, the 'Brainbox' project is also attempting to model a human mind.
Dr David Lester, one of the project's lead scientists, says that they are effectively in a race with Markram, a race they will have to win with cunning rather than cash.
'We've got £4million,' Lester says. 'Blue Brain has serious funding from the Swiss government and IBM. Henry Markram is to be taken seriously.'

And his ambition is by no means impossible. In the past year, models of a rat brain produced totally unexpected 'brainwave patterns' in the computer software. Is it possible that, for a few seconds maybe, a fleeting rat-like consciousness emerged?

Using just 30 watts of electricity - enough to power a dim light bulb - our brains can outperform by a factor of a million or more even the mighty Blue Gene computer. But replicating a whole real brain is 'entirely impossible today', Markram says.
Even the next stage - a complete rat brain - needs a £200million, vastly more efficient supercomputer.
Then what? 'We need a billion-dollar machine, custom-built. That could do a human brain.'
But computing power is increasing exponentially and it is only a matter of time before suitable hardware is available.
'We will get there,' says Markram confidently.
In fact, he believes that he will have a computer sufficiently powerful to deal with all the data and simulate a human brain before the end of this decade.
The result? Perhaps a mind, a conscious, sentient being, able to learn and make autonomous decisions. It is a startling possibility.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1240410/The-real-Frankenstein-experiment-One-mans-mission-create-living-mind-inside-machine.html#ixzz2LZs9YKsi

 

[mike]

IBM pursues chips that behave like brains


The company announced Thursday that it has built two prototype chips that it says process data more like how humans digest information than the chips that now power PCs and supercomputers.
The chips represent a significant milestone in a six-year-long project that has involved 100 researchers and some $41 million in funding from the government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. That's the Pentagon arm that focuses on long-term research and previously brought the world the Internet. IBM has also committed an undisclosed amount of money.

"You have to throw out virtually everything we know about how these chips are designed," he said. "The key, key, key difference really is the memory and the processor are very closely brought together. There's a massive, massive amount of parallelism."
The project is part of the same research that led to IBM's announcement in 2009 that it had simulated a cat's cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, using a massive supercomputer. Using progressively bigger supercomputers, IBM had previously simulated 40 percent of a mouse's brain in 2006, a rat's full brain in 2007, and 1 percent of a human's cerebral cortex in 2009.
A computer with the power of the human brain is not yet near. But Modha said the latest development is an important step.
"It really changes the perspective from 'What if?' to 'What now?'" Modha said. "Today we proved it was possible. There have been many skeptics, and there will be more, but this completes in a certain sense our first round of innovation."

IBM pursues chips that behave like brains - Yahoo! News

 

[mike]

Matt Ridley on How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

IBM supercomputer used to simulate a typical human brain

OpEdNews - Article: It's Alive!! Ray Kurzweil, AI, and Frankentelligence


Scientists to simulate human brain inside a supercomputer - CNN.com

We have to do this, Its inevitable

"I think it very likely -in fact inevitable-that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of intelligence in the universe."

Paul Davies -acclaimed physicist, cosmologist, and astrobiologist at Arizona State University.

 

[boomerang]

Sorta makes you wonder exactly who inside the gov wants the funding and why.

 

[Wade]

I guess this post would have been better off in the substrate mind thread, keep that one going. I listened to the point while live (not the podcast) & I do believe the discussion touched briefly on the application of nanobots introduced in the bloodsteam, but even taking into consideration the ""nanoness" of the bots would they be able to pass through the blood/brain barrier ? Would not they still have to mimic blood to get to the brain ?

Good set of additional links mike, I like how you manage to dig these up.

 

[mike]

Cheers Mate i have a folder full of them lol

As to the various whys.......

The obvious military applications aside, i think there is a definate "race" to acheive this, and you have to be in it to win it.

And of course as per the paul davies quote, it may be an expression of evolution itself, sentience seeking the optimum substrate to exist on

 

[Wade]

I guess this post would have been better off in the substrate mind thread, keep that one going. I listened to the point while live (not the podcast) & I do believe the discussion touched briefly on the application of nanobots introduced in the bloodsteam, but even taking into consideration the ""nanoness" of the bots would they be able to pass through the blood/brain barrier ? Would not they still have to mimic blood to get to the brain ?

Good set of additional links mike, I like how you manage to dig these up.

Here's something that popped up that may answer your question Wade

A Passport to Nanomedicine Success - ScienceNOW