Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

I’ve been following a two year project Blueprinting the human brain… described by  Stefanie Olsen … Staff Writer at CNET News.com. Stephanie wrote: “ A 3D computer simulation of 10,000 neurons firing in the human brain produces a terabyte of data--a fraction of what it would take to map the brain's billions of neurons in algorithms."

The Blue Brain project is headed by Henry Markram, a scientist working in collaboration with IBM, the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, or EPFL, in Lausanne, , and others. Think they'll reach their goal to create a blueprint of the  brain and advance cognition research?

Apparently… just last year, “EPFL bought a multimillion-dollar model of IBM's Blue Gene/L supercomputer for the two-year project, which is being conducted in . The group only recently simulated the firing of 10,000 neurons in a single column in the neocortex, the largest area of the human brain governing high-level thinking and action. (A column typically contains 100,000 neurons.)”

If this is the first step, as Markram, claimed at the Cognitive Computing conference, at IBM's Almaden Institute, then what can we expect at the end of two years…?

The group used visualization tools to locate and earmark interesting results in the computations for further research… and I am interested in what that research will offer business leaders. We already know that… Blue Brain bought a supercomputer from SGI to create a small media center to display the 3D simulations, which Markram said is "like sitting inside the brain." He believes that current technology could compute the billions of neurons in the brain.

For one thing… this project will change the face of computer software. Already… Blue Brain produced two software packages for cognitive computing. It’s not yet perfected but seems to be getting closer …. Only about 10 percent of the 10,000 neurons are firing in the current 3-demo, but it amazes me that they can already zoom in to examine single cells and describe exactly how the neuron is firing.

Not all scientists attending the conference were certain that the massive amounts of data generated will produce anything insightful. "It may just be too much data," said Vinod Menon, a professor in cognitive science at Stanford University . I’ll be reporting any further news on this one as it emerges. What do you think…?