http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiege...-466789,00.html

Very interesting. Thanks!

That was back in March. I wonder what their results are today?

I dont know what are you talking about

It's a brain simulation project described in the Spiegel article in the link in the first post. Here's an excerpt:

Growing a Brain in Switzerland
By Manfred Dworschak

A network of artificial nerves is growing in a Swiss supercomputer -- meant to simulate a natural brain, cell-for-cell. The researchers at work on "Blue Brain" promise new insights into the sources of human consciousness.

The machine is beautiful as it wakes up -- nerve cells flicker on the screen in soft pastel tones, electrical charges flash through a maze of synapses. The brain, just after being switched on, seems a little sleepy, but gentle bursts of current bring it fully to life.

This unprecedented piece of hardware consists of about 10,000 computer chips that act like real nerve cells. To simulate a natural brain, part of the cerebral cortex of young rats was painstakingly replicated in the computer, cell by cell, together with the branched tree-like structure of the synapses.

I hate to be the cynic, but the Blue Brain Project has yielded nothing and I doubt it will as there are probably millions of free parameters in these types of large-scale simulations. What is needed is more thorough high resolution mapping, like at the electron microscopic level, though the scale required for this type of mapping is not likely to be realised anytime soon.

I read they how they building network. Taking say 1 mm^2 and examing 6 layers of diferent types of neural cells. And from one such colum they then building all brain, perhaps randomly conecting synapses between colums neurons...
But I can't understand one thing, what criterion would be if neural networks work or not work? I think need connect artificial retinas and artifiac ears, what those brains would be able learn and "mounth" for speach. And is very strange that they begining building brain from humans brains and not from, for example aplysia/snail.