The most complex object known to humanity is the human brain -- and not only is it complex, but it is one of the few natural phenomena that science has no consciousness of. To try to replicate   something that is so poorly understood may therefore seem like pride. But you have to start somewhere, and International Business Machines (IBM) and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland, propose to start by replicating "in silico", one of the brain's building blocks. In a partnership announced, the two organizations said they would be working together to build a simulation   of a structure known as a neo-cortical column on a type of IBM supercomputer that is currently used to study the molecular functioning of genes. If that works, they plan to use more powerful computers to link such simulated columns together into something that mimics  a brain. In a real brain, a neo-cortical column is a cylindrical element about a third of a millimeter in diameter and three millimeters long. It is these columns, arranged side by side like the cells of a honeycomb, which make up the famous "grey matter" that has become shorthand for human intelligence. The Blue Gene/L supercomputer that will be used for the simulation consists of enough independent processors for each to be programmed to mimic an individual nerve cell in a column. The EPFL's contribution to the Blue Brain Project will be to create a digital description of how the columns behave. The database from its Brain Mind Institute will provide the raw material for the simulation. Biologists and computer scientists will then connect the artificial nerve cells up in a way that mimics nature. They will do so by assigning electrical properties to them, and telling them how to communicate with each other and how they should modify their connections with one another depending on their activity. That will be no mean feat. Even a single nerve cell is complicated, not least because each one has about 10,000 connections with others. And nerve cells come in great variety--relying, for example, on different chemical transmitters to carry messages across those connections. Eventually, however, a digital representation of an entire column Should occur. Assuming that the growth of computing power continues to follow Moore's Law, the leader of IBM's side thinks it should be practical to mimic an entire human brain in silico this way in ten to fifteen years. Such an artificial brain would, of course, be a powerful research tool. It would allow neurological experiments that currently take days in a "web lab" to be conducted in seconds. The researchers hope that their simulated brain will reveal the secrets of how certain psychiatric and neurological, disorders develop. But that is probably not the real reason for doing it. The most interesting question, surely, is whether such an artificial brain will be intelligent, or conscious, or both. What type of writing is this passage?
A science fiction A research report An official document A computer advertisement