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He argued that even if it was possible to record all spikes from all neurons at once, it was not a single brain: to connect the dots properly, you would have to simultaneously record the external stimuli that the brain was exposed to. , as well as the behavior of the organism. And he thought we needed to understand the brain at a macroscopic level before we could try to decipher what it means to fire individual neurons.
Others had concerns about the impact of centralizing control over these areas. Cornelia Bargmann, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University, worried that it would rule out research led by individual researchers. (Bargmann was soon selected to co-chair the BRAIN Initiative’s working group.)
There is no single agreed-upon theory of how the brain works, and not everyone in the field agreed that building a simulated brain was the best way to study it.
While the US initiative sought input from scientists to steer its direction, the EU project was strictly top-down with Markram at the helm. But as Noah Hutton documents in the 2020 movie in silico, Markram’s big plans were soon revealed. As an undergraduate majoring in neuroscience, Hutton was tasked with reading Markram’s papers and was impressed by his proposal to simulate the human brain; when he started making documentary films, he decided to date that effort. But he soon realized that the billion-dollar enterprise was characterized by civil wars and shifting goals rather than groundbreaking science.
in silico It portrays Markram as a charismatic leader who must make bold claims about the future of neuroscience to attract funding to realize his vision. But the project was troubled from the start by a major problem: There is no single agreed-upon theory of how the brain works, and not everyone in the field agreed that building a simulated brain was the best way to study it. It didn’t take long for these differences to emerge in the EU project.
In 2014, hundreds of experts across Europe penned a letter expressing concerns about oversight, funding mechanisms and transparency. Human Brain Project. The scientists thought Markram’s purpose was premature and too narrow, and would exclude funding for researchers looking for other ways to study the brain.
“What struck me was if it succeeded and got it working and the simulated brain worked, what did you learn?” Terry Sejnowski, a computational neuroscientist at the Salk Institute who serves on the BRAIN Initiative’s advisory committee, told me. “The simulation is as complex as the brain.”
The Human Brain Project’s board of directors voted to change its organization and leadership in early 2015, replacing a three-member executive committee led by Markram with a 22-member board. Christoph Ebell, a Swiss entrepreneur with a background in science diplomacy, has been appointed executive director. “The project was at a crisis point when I took over,” he says. “People were clearly wondering if the project would move forward.”
But a few years later, after a “strategic disagreement” with the project’s hosting agency, he also stepped out. The project now focuses on providing a new computational research infrastructure to help neuroscientists store, process and analyze large volumes of data – unsystematic data collection was a challenge for the field – and developing 3D brain atlases and software to create simulations.
Meanwhile, the US BRAIN Initiative has experienced its own changes. In early 2014, it morphed into something more pragmatic, responding to the concerns of scientists and recognizing the limits of the possible. develops technologies to probe the brain.
New day
These changes are finally starting to pay off—even if they weren’t what the founders of each of the great brain projects originally envisioned.
Last year, the Human Brain Project was a 3D digital map combining different aspects of human brain organization millimeter and micrometer level. It’s essentially a Google Earth for the brain.
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