(October 9, 2015) An
international team led by EPFL scientists have completed a first draft computer
reconstruction of a piece of the neocortex. The electrical behavior of the
virtual brain tissue was simulated on supercomputers and found to match the
behavior observed in a number of experiments on the brain. Further simulations
revealed novel insights into the functioning of the neocortex. This first step
towards the digital reconstruction and simulation of the brain is published in
Cell.
Today, the Blue Brain Project, the simulation core of the
Human Brain Project, released a draft digital reconstruction of the neocortical
microcircuitry of the rat brain. – a detailed computer representation of about
a third of a cubic millimetre of brain tissue containing about 30,000 neurons
connected by nearly 40 million synapses. Simulating the emergent electrical
behavior of this virtual tissue on supercomputers reproduced a range of
previous observations made in experiments on the brain, validating its
biological accuracy and providing new insights into the functioning of the neocortex.
The project has published the full set of experimental data and the digital
reconstruction, in a public web portal, allowing researchers around the world
to use them (https://bbp.epfl.ch/nmc-portal).
The paper describing the digital reconstruction is published
by the renowned journal Cell (ref), acclaimed for publishing only the most
important biological discoveries. The reconstruction represents the culmination
of 20 years of biological experimentation that generated the core dataset, and
10 years of computational science work that developed the algorithms and built
the software ecosystem required to digitally reconstruct and simulate the
tissue.
The study is the result of a massive effort by 82 scientists
and engineers at EPFL and at institutions in Israel, Spain, Hungary, USA,
China, Sweden, and the UK. The publication represents a major milestone for the
EPFL scientists. “They delivered what they promised.”, says Patrick Aebischer,
president of EPFL who together with the Swiss government took the bold step of
funding the ambitious and controversial Blue Brain Project. While a long way
from the whole brain, the study demonstrates that it is feasible to digitally
reconstruct and simulate brain tissue. It is a first step and a significant
contribution to Europe’s Human Brain Project, which Henry Markram founded, and
where EPFL is the coordinating partner.