The Blue Brain project at Swizerland’s EPFL was launched in 2005, is looking into reverse engineering of the human brain.The team has been picking apart the sturcture of the neocortical column since 15 years and indexing all the types and shapes of connections, icluding their functionality, describing their rules of communication. The project is at the stage of constructing an artificial neocortical column, which has tens of thousands of neurons.

After constructing one section artificially, the models and algorithms are fed into a supercomputer, as for one neuron calculation a laptop would be needed. Feeding these models into supercomputer allows the researchers track the brain activity upon feeding the brain certain inputs.

Apart from contributing to the artificial intelligence research, the project could also be helpful in uncovering mysteries of many brain related diseases.

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It was also recently argued by a leading US inventor that, the machines would achieve human level thinking capability by the end of 2020s. Considering the progress in medicine now has taken the course of IT development and the growth being exponential, the knowledge we will have gained by then will enable us to create artificial entities that is compatible to human intelligence. The inventor claims that, progress in reverse engineering of the brain, improved algorithms, use of nano machines will all combine into making of this currently sci-fi looking idea. For that article, click here.

Reference: bbc.co.uk