Arndt.Wil

Wow, this is really cool. The visualization itself rocks. Then I read about the research and effort behind it…

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/03/out_of_the_blue.php

…Each of its microchips has been programmed to act just like a real neuron in a real brain. The behavior of the computer replicates, with shocking precision, the cellular events unfolding inside a mind. “This is the first model of the brain that has been built from the bottom-up,” says Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the director of the Blue Brain project. “There are lots of models out there, but this is the only one that is totally biologically accurate. We began with the most basic facts about the brain and just worked from there.”…

…Once the team is able to model a complete rat brain—that should happen in the next two years—Markram will download the simulation into a robotic rat, so that the brain has a body. He’s already talking to a Japanese company about constructing the mechanical animal…

I have a question: Let’s assume if an exact simulation of the brain executes in 20 yrs what a real brain processes in 20 secs, is it still “conscious”? Does the scale of time have anything to do with the definition of consciousness? Probably not to us since it wouldn’t be practical to interact with such a being. Which perhaps lends some weight to the notion that consciousness is an illusion to begin with.

Or maybe it’s an ILLOOOSION.

Tags: Observations & Culture, Science, Technology //