Biological computing from Heinz von Foerster to the present: a tool for understanding intelligence?

[xchrom]

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Biological/computing/from/Heinz/von/Foerster/to/the/present/tool/for/understanding/elpepusoc/20110701elpepusoc_6/Tes

Since the summer of 2005 the Brain Mind Institute together with IBM, the world's largest computer company, have been pursuing their unique and highly ambitious Blue Brain Project. The Project uses reverse engineering (RE) - a process of discovering the fundamental principles of a device or system by taking it apart in order to understand and reconstruct it. According to director Henry Markram, recent leaps in computer technology and the huge amount of neurophysiologic data accumulated over the last decades should help us realize the dream of building biologically accurate models of the brain from first principle to aid our understanding of brain function and dysfunction. As Markram reports his team has already succeeded in building a "highly biologically accurate" model of a neo-cortical column, which is considered to be the basic microstructure of the brain. As from now, he asserts, it will be only be a question of time and computational power to eventually create a computer simulation of the whole human brain with its 100 billion neurons.

It is indeed the immense calculating speed of IBM's latest supercomputer Blue Gene that has allowed Markram and his team to take their first steps. Pointing to the fact that modern computing has already revolutionized other disciplines of science by simulating "some of nature's most intimate processes with exquisite accuracy" Markram is certain that by exploiting the enormous computing power of Blue Gene, it will soon be possible to make a similar series of quantum leaps in neuroscience and simulate the brains of mammals with unprecedented biological accuracy.

Interestingly, IBM's supercomputer itself replicates the structure of biological systems: With its system-on-a-chip-design Blue Gene consists of up to 65,536 nodes that each incorporate all the elementary components of a comparably low-power computer in one integrated circuit. This distinguishes Blue Gene from its predecessors, which mostly relied on the conventional method of

[patrice]

1. Hoping it goes: Computer simulations > Columns > Consolidation, i.e. how Columns become Columns. nt