While reading “Out of Our Minds” by Sir Ken Robinson —published in 2003 — one prediction that blew my mind was the possibilities of backing up our brain information. It was not convincing, even considering some forty odd years into the future. I did a Google Search to discover that actually the book quoted a prediction by renowned futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson.
“By about 2040, there will be a backup of our brains in a computer somewhere, so that when you die it won’t be a major career problem.” – Ian Pearson
There are also other similar endeavors like the 2045 Initiative, whose goal is to create technologies enabling transfer of mind and thus extending life to the point of immortality. The underlying concept of our interest is the same, but it is referred by different terms like whole brain emulation (WBE), mind uploading, brain backup, etc.
After a decade, as we have finished one-fourth of the predicted time-frame, it’s interesting to do a reality check. Have we—science—made similar progress in reality?
In April 2013, the Obama administration announced BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), a decade-long research initiative with the goal of developing technologies that can provide insight into the dynamic understanding of brain function.
“THERE IS THIS ENORMOUS MYSTERY WAITING TO BE UNLOCKED, AND THE BRAIN INITIATIVE WILL CHANGE THAT BY GIVING SCIENTISTS THE TOOLS THEY NEED TO GET A DYNAMIC PICTURE OF THE BRAIN IN ACTION AND BETTER UNDERSTAND HOW WE THINK AND HOW WE LEARN AND HOW WE REMEMBER. AND THAT KNOWLEDGE COULD BE — WILL BE — TRANSFORMATIVE.”
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, APRIL 2, 2013
If we leave other complexities aside and just consider the scale of data generated by such projects, it will demand enormous memory. As some neuroscientists estimate, the whole brain simulation would generate 300 exabytes (300,000 petabytes) of data annually. It is estimated that even in 2020, supercomputer memory will not surpass the 200 petabytes mark. That’s not that disheartening, there are proposed solutions to make use of available computing power like storing detailed model into some fast random-access storage systems built next to the supercomputer, from which a multi-scale simulation software will call models of neurons, synapses, circuits and brain regions.
In August 2013, a general neuronal network simulation project was jointly carried out by researches from RIKEN, the Okinawa Institute of Technology Graduate University (OIST) in Japan and Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany. The project exploited the full computational power of the K computer — currently the fourth most powerful computer in the world, to simulate 1 second of neural network activities, representing only 1% of neural network of our brain. It took good 40 minutes to 82,944 processors of K computer. If this looks any less than one should check the K computer configuration.
Now the interesting part — the project was simulated with NEST, a general-purpose neuronal network simulation open-source software. The whole purpose of the project was to test the limits of the simulation technology and capabilities of K. So the experience gained during the project will help them in designing the novel simulation software.
Finally, there are several other research groups actively working on similar agendas, one worth mentioning is Human Brain Project (HBP). In February 2015, HBP scientists built a “virtual mouse” by placing a simplified computer model of the mouse brain into a virtual mouse body. It may appear that there is no connection in simulating the brain and backing up its information. They are in fact interlinked, as for a successfully backed-up brain, there has to be a way to simulate it. Revisiting our goal of checking the status of where we stand today, let me share my view that I tend to agree that science has indeed traveled with the predicted speed — please share yours by leaving a comment.
So, what will happen if humans succeed in backing-up such enormous rather sensitive data, what about it’s security, what if somebody breaks into it, will s/he gains access to our consciousness? I don’t know, nobody knows.
The post Brain Simulation appeared first on ANSYS.