Digital Rat Brain Spontaneously Develops Organized Neuron Patterns
Researchers hope the breakthrough could lead to a fully virtual human brain within ten years Four years ago, a team of researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland switched on Blue Brain, a computer designed to mimic a functioning slice of a rat's brain. At first, the virtual neurons fired only when prodded by a simulated electrical current. But recently, that has changed. Apparently, the simulated neurons have begun spontaneously coordinating, and organizing themselves into a more complex pattern that resembles a wave. According to the scientists, this is the beginning of the self-organizing neurological patterns that eventually, in more complex mammal brains, become personality. The computer simulation utilizes an IBM supercomputer capable of performing 22.8 trillion operations in a second. And that's just barely enough to simulate one part of a rat's brain. Each individual neuron requires the computing power...