The Blue Brain Project “has been hyped immensely,” said Max Planck Institute for Brain Research director Moritz Helmstaedter in an interview with Science. “But what happened is exactly what we feared: There are no real findings. Putting together lots and lots of data does not create new science.”

This is just an example to the kind of criticisms it has been facing. But to be honest, I don’t get what the fuss is about! The Blue Brain Project has created a tiny part of a rat’s brain using nothing but a computer. No rats were harmed or killed in this task, and that could really improve modern day testing process and millions of lives could be saved.

The final goal of this project although remains to create a digital version of the whole human brain. For now, after a decade of work, the Blue Brain Project of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne claims to have constructed 31,000 virtual neurons comprised of 207 individual neuron subtypes. Although, the entire brain together consists of 21 million neurons, this is still an amazing feat.

The hope here, as the New York Times explains, is for researchers to be able to “digitally encode some characteristics of neurons and their connections that are common to all brains.” Cori Bargmann of New York’s Rockefeller University calls the progress thus far an “amazing tour de force” of data.

Author:Technology Blog