Progress
In November 2007, the project reported the end of the first phase, delivering a data-driven process for creating, validating, and researching the neocortical column.
By 2005 the first single cellular model was completed. The first artificial cellular neocortical column of 10,000 cells was built by 2008. By July 2011 a cellular mesocircuit of 100 neocortical columns with a million cells in total was built. A cellular rat brain is planned for 2014 with 100 mesocircuits totalling a hundred million cells. Finally a cellular human brain is predicted possible by 2023 equivalent to 1000 rat brains with a total of a hundred billion cells.
Now that the column is finished, the project is currently busying itself with the publishing of initial results in scientific literature, and pursuing two separate goals:
- construction of a simulation on the molecular level, which is desirable since it allows studying the effects of gene expression;
- simplification of the column simulation to allow for parallel simulation of large numbers of connected columns, with the ultimate goal of simulating a whole neocortex (which in humans consists of about 1 million cortical columns).
Read more about this topic: Blue Brain Project
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—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)