Brain simulation breakthrough reveals clues about sleep, memory

Instead of taking apart brain after brain in the name of science, however, researchers at the Blue Brain Project – which resides at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in France – have spent the past decade trying to digitally reconstruct the brain section of a juvenile rat.

The researchers wrote, that the slow synchronous waves of neuronal activity, which have been found in the brain during sleep, were “triggered” during the simulations, suggesting that neural circuits may have the unique ability to able to switch into different “modes” that could explain critical behaviours. “They try to stretch their model to say something interesting about actual biological function, but it falls far short on that front”. Using this wealth of data, they built a virtual brain slice representing the different neuron types present in this region and the key features controlling their firing and, most notably, modeling their connectivity, including almost 40 million synapses and 2,000 connections between each brain cell type.

So, what does a functional map of 30,000 neurons look like, and how much digital rat brain are we dealing with? That led to a set of fundamental rules describing how neurons connect to synapses and form microcircuits. This “virtual brain slice” is one of the scientific community’s most detailed brain models yet.

The scientists were able to create a computer reconstruction of a piece of a rat neocortex the size of a single grain of sand. The project is called the Blue Brain Project and it aims to reconstruct brains from different mammals through a computer.

He said this was not yet a proof of principle that scientists could indeed reconstruct the human brain, which contains 85 billion or more neurons, but that it was a first step.

The group of 800 scientists challenged the BHP to prove how they planned to accomplish their goal of recreating the digital version of the human brain. Even though, the digital reconstruction was not created to reproduce any specific circuit phenomenon, a variety of experimental findings emerged. After that, they simulated certain kinds of brain activity and found that the reconstruction acted like a living tissue. Reconstruction and Simulation of Neocortical Microcircuitry. “The reconstruction is a first draft, it is not complete and it is not yet a flawless digital replica of the biological tissue”, says Henry Markram.

Still, many remain noncommittal when it comes to the future of brain mapping. The project has been widely criticised over the years for their overly ambitious goal of trying to recreate the human brain.

Critics additionally mentioned that the Blue Brain project (BBP) engulfed a few huge cash and produced little to no outcomes.