Possibilities of emulating the inner workings of human brain

Professor Steve Furber is one of the pioneers of the UK's computer industry. He was principal designer of the BBC Micro that gave many of Britain's current computer bosses their first taste of technology. He has now turned his attention to mimicking the human brain.

Most of the frontiers of science, from particle physics to radio astronomy, seem to be concerned with the incredibly small or the unimaginably large.

But there is a lump of stuff inside each of our heads that we could easily hold in our hands and look at, yet we have no idea how it works.

We know that our brains are built from a hundred billion small cells called neurons, and these cells sit in a biochemical bath and send electrical pulses to each other every so often.

It is a strange thing to realise that everything that we see, smell, hear, think, dream and say - indeed our very being - is just a consequence of those billions of cells inside our heads going "ping" from time to time.

We now have a fair idea of how those neurons are organised into major functional areas within the brain. Hi-tech scanners give us ever-more detailed glimpses into which brain areas are active, and in what order, when we receive particular inputs or think particular thoughts.

 

But we still have no idea of the spike "language" that the neurons use to talk to each other, nor how that spiking activity becomes coherent thoughts and actions.

read the full article, BBC Technology News ...

Further information:

• SpiNNaker overview.
• Professor Steve Furber's Homepage.
• The Digital60 Kilburn Lecture, Speaker: Professor Steve Furber.