{"id":14745,"date":"2012-12-05T07:43:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-05T13:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=14745"},"modified":"2012-12-05T07:43:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-05T13:43:00","slug":"canadian-scientists-create-virtual-human-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/05\/canadian-scientists-create-virtual-human-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Scientists Create Virtual Human Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

A large scale model of a human brain has been created by a team of scientists at the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, University of Waterloo, Ontario. This is a virtual model, inside a computer, that involves 2,5 million virtual neurons structures in a pattern resembling the overall human brain\u2019s anatomy, including cortical regions, motor control regions, etc. There are two components of the model: Visual processing including input and visual memory, and motor control sufficient to make a relatively simple, but 3D, arm move so it can draw things. The brain is called Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network, or, rather creepily, \u201cSpaun.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\"ResearchBlogging.org\"<\/a><\/span>This is a pretty intense project but Spaun is sufficiently complex and integrate that it begins to approach an actual human brain in one important way: The external manifestation of its function is orders of magnitude simpler than its internal workings, so the best way to get a feel for how it works is to just watch it in action. The researchers, clearly understand this, have produce a paper (published in Science Magazine) that comes along with rather impressive videos of their spawn, er, I mean, of Spaun, in action. Finally, a complex research paper that explains itself!<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the Introductory Movie:<\/p>\n