Even in the 21st century, there are still a lot of unsolved mysteries when it comes to the human brain. It is a complicated machine that neuroscientists continually try to understand.
A new scientific endeavor hopes to unravel some of these mysteries by creating a highly detailed simulation of the human brain. Essentially, researchers will use a supercomputer to build a working replica of our minds.
With $1.6 billion in funding and more than 200 researchers, the Human Brain Project is the largest, most ambitious cooperative experiment of its kind. Serious hardware is necessary for a project of this kind -- to pack the simulation into a single computer would require a system 1,000 times more powerful than today’s supercomputers.
The project will officially begin later this year. It will take Europe 10 years to map all of the 100 billion neurons connected by 100,000 billion synapses that make up a human brain.