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Blue Brain is a project, begun in May 2005, to create a computer simulation of the brain of mammals including the human brain, down to the molecular level.

 

Blue Brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

So is this computer simulation simulating the brain down to molecular level, or is it leaving out some detail, eg. Microtubules or quantum processing, and are these examples woo woo ideas that I hear some people speak of.

 

Microtubule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Solve :eek::lol:

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Blue Brain is a project, begun in May 2005, to create a computer simulation of the brain of mammals including the human brain, down to the molecular level.

 

Blue Brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

So is this computer simulation simulating the brain down to molecular level, or is it leaving out some detail, eg. Microtubules or quantum processing,

According to the linked wikipedia article, Blue Brain will use the NEURON neuron simulator. As NEURON is essentially a toolkit of cell membrane-simulation tools, its accurate to describe the proposed Blue Brain simulation as “down to the molecular level”, but not “down to the atomic”, or sub-atomic, level, at which quantum effects, such as those involving microtubules speculated to be involved in human thought such people as Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose (for a summary, see this wikipedia article section). So it’s leaving out the detail required by possible models hinted at by Hameroff and Penrose.

and are these examples woo woo ideas that I hear some people speak of.

I’d certainly call a simulation of very cell in even a small part of a mammalian brain a realization of a woo woo / ultra-cool idea. Though only the first steps in what’s likely to be a long series of projects, this and similar neurological simulation work promises to provide concrete, reproducible support (if the models fail to behave like actual brains) or refutation (if they do) to questions such as those posed by Penrose and like-minded scientists and philosophers, who name their position such things as “New Mysterianism”.

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Not a new idea, not the craziest concept, but certainly Blue Brain seems like a good start to perhaps, in the future a project that can provide valuable insight into the true workings of our brain. Ultra-cool idea, perhaps, perhaps not, but a good one to follow and see where it goes, most certainly :turtle:

 

I sense a lot of sleepless nights spent trying to figure out models, processes and debugging code :shrug:

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solve

The answer, as always, is 42. :-P

 

I tend to agree with Gödel's theorem ( I think it was his) which states that a system cannot fully understand itself, no matter how hard it tries.

I think it currently has something to do with the small numbers of living people willing to be test subjects. :-)

As researchers go further and understand more, im sure they will meet other problems as well.

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