By Dick Pelletier
Director Henry Markram of the IBM-Swiss Blue Brain project believes that his team
of up to 125 researchers is on target to create the world’s first
artificial brain by as early as 2015.
In June 2005, IBM and the Swiss Brain
Mind Institute announced a plan to create a digital 3D replica of
the human brain. 
Named after the IBM Blue Gene
supercomputer, the Blue Brain Project has started modeling, in
precise detail, the cellular infrastructure of the cerebral
neocortex.
Although Markram expects his creation may eventually learn to
speak, he is not holding his breath waiting for consciousness to
rise from its brain. What he is after is something far more useful
than a talking machine. By creating a better understanding of how
human brains perform, doctors will learn more about why our brains
fail.
Disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, and dementia are
the price we pay for having complicated brains. “We don’t
understand what goes wrong inside those circuits,” says Markram.
“We’re still in empirical medicine. If a drug works; great. If not,
we try another one.”
Blue Brain will accelerate today’s slow drug approval system of
animal testing and human clinical trials by providing scientists
with an immediate and accurate brain response to new drugs.
Computer giant IBM provides the
machinery for this ambitious project. Already a major supplier of
supercomputers to the lucrative science market, company researchers
saw a rare chance to raise technology standards by partnering with
the Brain Mind Institute in this daunting challenge.
Although today’s supercomputer Blue Gene/L performs 18.7
trillion calculations per second, it cannot capture the
quadrillions of interactions of 100 billion human brain cells
communicating with each other, which is required to complete the
project by 2015. But with computer power doubling every two years,
Markram is confident that sufficient computing capacity will arrive
in time.
Experts wonder if this virtual brain will think on its own.
Markram isn’t counting on it, but he will be watching to see if it
starts to make decisions. If this happens, consciousness may not be
far behind.
Markram again stresses that Blue Brain’s goal is not to build an
artificial intelligence system, nor create a conscious machine. But
others believe that if stimulated properly, this artificial brain
will learn to imitate human behavior. If it thinks and acts like
us, and later develops a human voice, would we consider it to be
conscious? Experts say we would.
However, putting the consciousness potential aside, the Blue
Brain Project will help find a cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s,
and most brain diseases. It will also help patients regain lost
sight and hearing, and even restore mobility to paraplegics.
Now imagine observing billions of neuron interactions when a
drug is ingested. We could watch the brain as it receives messages
from the drug and directs our body to heal. Here’s a thought – what
if our brain could instruct the body to heal itself without
medicine? Forward-thinkers believe that one day, this miracle could
happen.
Some may find creating an artificial brain unsettling, but the
desire to find cures for the millions who suffer from brain
diseases will drive this “magical future” forward.
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