SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
IBM Reveals the Biggest Artificial Brain of All Time
from Popular Mechanics
San Jose, Calif. -- Scientists at IBM's Almaden research center have built the biggest artificial brain ever--a cell-by-cell simulation of the human visual cortex: 1.6 billion virtual neurons connected by 9 trillion synapses. This computer simulation, as large as a cat's brain, blows away the previous record--a simulated rat's brain with 55 million neurons--built by the same team two years ago.
"This is a Hubble Telescope of the mind, a linear accelerator of the brain," says Dharmendra Modha, the Almaden computer scientist who will announce the feat at the Supercomputing 2009 conference in Portland, Ore. In other words, in the realm of computer science, the team's undertaking is grand.
... Modha hopes the simulation, assembled using neuroscience data from rats, cats, monkeys and humans, will help scientists better understand how the brain works--and, in particular, how the cortical microcolumn manages to perform such a wide range of tasks.
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