Henry Markram: A brain in a supercomputer
Henry Markram says the mysteries of the mind can be solved — soon. Mental illness, memory, perception: they're made of neurons and electric signals, and he plans to find them with a supercomputer that models all the brain's 100,000,000,000,000 synapses.
Henry Markram plans to build a virtual model of a human brain. A neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he believes the only way to truly understand how our brains work — and why they often don't — is to create a replica out of 1s and 0s, then subject it to a barrage of computer-simulated experiments.
Markram has established the Human Brain Project to do just that. The effort aims to integrate all aspects of the human brain that have been discovered by neuroscientists over the past few decades, from the structures of ion channels to the mechanisms of conscious decision-making, into a single supercomputer model: a virtual brain. The project, which is controversial among neuroscientists, has been selected as a finalist for the European Union's two new Flagship Initiatives — grants worth 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) apiece.
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