IBM to create world's first computer-based human brain model

International Business Machines Corp (IBM) is linking with a team of Swiss scientists to create the world's first accurate, computer-based model of the brain, the U.S. company said on Monday.
The researchers hope that modeling the brain at the cellular level will give new insights into the workings of the most complex organ in the body.

The immediate goal is to model the circuitry in the neocortex, which accounts for about 85 percent of the human brain's mass and is thought to be responsible for language, learning, memory and complex thought. By expanding the work to other areas, scientists hope to eventually generate a computer-based model of the entire brain.

Henry Markram and colleagues at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, will spend the next two years using IBM's supercomputer Blue Gene to create a working 3-dimensional model of the neocortex.