Why we’re building a €1 billion model of a human brain The Human
Brain Project has just won a €1 billion research prize. Its
director Henry Markram says the initiative will unify our
understanding of the brain Your project aims to recreate the
human brain in a supercomputer. Why? We want to reach a unified
understanding of the brain and the simulation on a supercomputer
is the tool. Today you have neuroscientists working on a
genetic, behavioural or cognitive level, and then you have
informaticians, chemists and mathematicians. They all have their
own understanding of how the brain functions and is structured.
How do you get them all around the same table? We think of the
project as like a CERN for the brain. The model is our way of
bringing everyone, and our understanding, together. What do you
hope will come of the project? There are three goals. As the
model becomes more accurate and behaves more like a brain, we
could couple it to a robot and see the robot learning. Then
we’ll be able to trace the chain o