A billion for brain powder?
The scientist estimated his "brain" at a billion euros
Alexander Sotov, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 16.04.2012
It is expected that the European Union will soon pass a verdict on the life of Professor Henry Markram from the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (Switzerland), who hopes to receive funding in the amount of 1 billion euros to continue the project on computer modeling of the human brain.
The official discussion of the project, the implementation of which began seven years ago, took place at the Swiss Academy of Sciences on January 20. Academics tried to get an answer from Markram to the question of what he does, and found out that the scientist's plans include the creation of a supercomputer simulation of "everything we know about the human brain," writes the journal Nature (Computer modeling: Brain in a box). In addition, it turned out that if the European Union agrees to allocate huge funds for the implementation of the project, Markram promises to rename it the Human Brain Project (HBP), and eventually hopes to create an "artificial model of consciousness."
"Bullshit,– said a source of the journal Nature, who was present at the discussion, commenting on the scientist's proposals.
In fact, it was not the "source" who said this, but one of Markram's colleagues: the article in Nature begins like this: “It wasn't quite the lynching that Henry Markram had expected. But the barrage of sceptical comments from his fellow neuroscientists – “It's crap,” said one – definitely made the day feel like a tribunal». (By the way, of the several translations of the word “crap”, the most delicate one is chosen here :) And about the results of the project already obtained (the second point on the graph from the same source), read the article Blue Brain: modeling the brain – VM.
However, Markram, an electrophysiologist of South African descent who has been working in Lausanne for ten years, still has a chance to get funding.
"Brain researchers publish 60,000 articles a year," he told academics gathered in Bern. – These are wonderful, fantastic studies. However, all this is picking at one molecule, one area of the brain, one function." With the help of his project, Markram hopes to combine these discoveries by understanding how neural connections are organized and how they lead to the emergence of consciousness. And this is the greatest mystery of brain science. Ultimately, the project will help to find a way to rid humanity of Alzheimer's and other diseases. "If there is no integral approach to the brain, then we will not understand such diseases," Markram stressed.
Expensive fictionNo one argues – a great prospect!
But Markram has very few supporters. Many scientists think that the project is initially going down the wrong path. Markram's plan seems to them too detailed, as if he knows how both the brain and consciousness are arranged. In addition, the scientist works well with the press, but the hype around his work seems to have played a cruel joke. Tabloids, not scientific journals, are willing to write about the project. There are no results, and there is too much talk about them.
"Diversity is necessary in brain science," says Rodney Douglas, one of the heads of the Swiss Institute of Neuroinformatics. Given that we know too little about the brain, "we need as many people as possible, as many points of view as possible." If you direct money to finance a single project, you will achieve the opposite results. But Markram is adamant. Now scientists do not have a single plan for brain research, he says. "I propose such a plan. This is the construction of a unified model."
Skeptics object to him, recalling such unsuccessful projects as IBM's "cat brain". If you think that the 147,456 processors and 144 terabytes of memory collected by IBM into a single computing complex in 2009 made a virtual copy of a pet meow and scratch, then you are sorely mistaken. However, this did not prevent the mastermind of the project and Markram's main competitor, Dharmendra Modha from IBM, from receiving $ 21 million in 2011 from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the US Department of Defense. Markram then called the cat brain project a "hoax." And really – why waste time on trifles? If you're going to build a brain, then it's human. Why a cat? And not for 20 million, but 50 times more expensive – at the price of the entire European ExoMars program, and even during the ongoing economic crisis in the European Union. In the meantime, Markram faces a smaller task – to extend the financing of his project in Switzerland. The decision on this should be made by the parliament of the Alpine country.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru16.04.2012