Making Brains

Engaging a frontier that is simultaneously insane and genius (noting that most things genius are also in some sense insane), scientists are using a supercomputer that runs on "22.8 teraflops of processing power to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain".

What is a teraflop? Whatever it is, it sounds serious...

For over a decade Markram and his colleagues have been building a database of the neural architecture of the neocortex, the largest and most complex part of mammalian brains.

Using pioneering techniques, they have studied precisely how individual neurons behave electrically and built up a set of rules for how different types of neurons connect to one another.

Very thin slices of mouse brain were kept alive under a microscope and probed electrically before being stained to reveal the synaptic, or nerve, connections. “We have the largest database in the world of single neurons that have been recorded and stained,” says Markram.
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Two new models will be built, one a molecular model of the neurons involved. The other will clone the behavioural model of columns thousands of times to produce a complete neocortex, and eventually the rest of the brain. (article)

Absolutely amazing.