The 10 year-long global Human Brain Project that hopes to gain a deeper understanding of how the brain works has kicked off.
The project is considered to be the "most advanced neuroscience project in the world," Forbes reported. The team is made up of 130 research institutions and will study the brain across a variety of platforms.
"The Human Brain Project is an attempt to build completely new computer science technology that will enable us to collect all the information we have built up about the brain over the years," Professor Henry Markram, Director of the HBP at EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), in Switzerland, told the BBC.
"We should begin to understand what makes the human brain unique, the basic mechanisms behind cognition and [behavior], how to objectively diagnose brain diseases, and to build new technologies inspired by how the brain computes," he said.
The researchers realize that today's computer technology is not quite there in terms of having the ability to simulate the human brain, but believe it will be possible in the next decade.
Researchers at the University of Manchester are working towards a model that will mimic at least one percent of human brain capabilities.
"I've spent my career building conventional computers and I've seen their performance grow spectacularly. Yet they still struggle to do things that humans find instinctive. Even very young babies can [recognize] their mothers but programming a computer to [recognize] a particular person is possible but very hard," leader of the SpiNNaker project Steve Furber, said, the BBC reported.
Researchers believe this would be a big step towards creating neuromorphic computers, which could learn like the human brain.
"With this knowledge we could produce computer chips with [specialized] cognitive skills that mimic those of the human brain, such as the ability to [analyze] crowds, or decision-making on large and complex datasets," Professor Markram said.
Some people have criticized the project for costing too much money, but the researchers have high hopes for the giant study's outcome.
"There are plenty of grounds for [skepticism] about whether the project will deliver a fairly complete understanding of how the brain works. But we will make progress even if we don't achieve that ultimate goal and that could yield major benefits for medicine, computing and for society," Furber said.
