The brain game

Thursday 23 July

A fully-functional artificial human brain could be possible by 2010

The human ability to create evermore impressive technology never fails to astound me. It wasn’t long ago we were all marvelling at a box that could display moving pictures in black and white. Then we were astounded when these moving pictures were suddenly in technicolor. Now we don’t even look at a television unless it’s about an inch thin!

That’s just one example of the evolution of technology, but that’s just for entertainment purposes. What about in science for instance? Well, now we’re being told that a fully functional artificial human brain could be built within the next ten years!

Think of the possibilities. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, speaking at a conference in Oxford, told of how a synthetic brain would be beneficial to helping find treatments for mental illness.

Apparently the Blue Brain Project, which was launched in 2005 and aims to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from laboratory data, has already simulated elements of a rat’s brain. These simulations have been helping the researches to find clues about how the brain works. Show the brain a picture for instance, and you can follow the electrical activity in the machine!

It’s clever stuff, and an understanding of technology way beyond mine, but if this sort of tech can take off and eventually help some of the two billion people on Earth afflicted with mental health disorders, then surely it’s worth investigating further. And this is just the beginning. Think of where this tech could be beyond 2010. After all it wasn’t that long ago we were all watching black and white TV sets…