IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer tackles major scientific challenge
Yorktown Heights, NY, and Lausanne, Switzerland, June 6, 2005
— IBM and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de
Lausanne (EPFL) have announced an ambitious research initiative
to use the huge computational capacity of IBM’s Blue Gene supercomputer
to create a detailed model of the neocortex — the region of
the brain unique to mammals and the hallmark of cognitive intelligence.
By expanding the model to other areas of the brain, scientists plan
to eventually build an accurate, computer-based model of the entire
brain. Using the model, scientists hope to understand more about
many cognitive processes such as thought, perception and memory
and how and why certain microcircuits in the brain malfunction,
which is thought to be the cause of many psychiatric disorders.
For centuries, scientists and philosophers have been fascinated
by the brain, but until recently they viewed the brain as nearly
incomprehensible. Now, however, the brain is beginning to give up
its secrets. Scientists have learned more about the brain in the
past 10 years than in all previous centuries because of the accelerating
pace of research in neurological and behavioral science and the
development of new research techniques. Modelling the brain at the
cellular level has never been attempted before—it is hoped
that the application of the world's most powerful computing system
to the field of neuroscience will yield crucial new insight into
this vital and complex organ of the body.
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