Hello,

Is there any project or long time goal to hunt for a mathematical model of the brain that would act as a simulation of the real brain? Is this taken seriously?

It would be so fantastic to have a mathematical function that takes in the essential features of the sensory input that the brain takes in and then churns out the behavioural response of that brain in some numerical value or something of that sort.

*sigh*...guess I won't be seeing anything like that in my lifetime...

Interesting concept!
And no doubt the total would be greater than the parts.

I've never come across any written material even close to achieving a mathematical model, but I had a bash several years ago to draw a flow chart which attempted to show the processes and linkages involved in at least some of the brains processes (or functions).
It ended up as a big picture, was incomplete, probably too simplistic and erroneous and became so complicated that I could not understand it!
Needless to say, I shelved the idea.

If I remember correctly there is a project in Switzerland which aims to create an artificial intelligence with the same capacity as a human brain.

The reason why they have not done so already is because the costs associated with doing so are enormous but by 2010 the price will be affordable. So in the future, we could expect to see very powerful forms of artificial intelligence.

I think this might be the closest we've gone to creating a mathematical model of the brain. Creating a artificial brain through a supercomputer.
seedmagazine . com / news / 2008 / 03 / out_of_the_blue . php?page=all&p=y

i dunno about that.

1) we don't understand the brain fully enough to even begin mapping out what inputs would amount to a certain behavioral changes

2) The idea is still being tossed around that the brain is a quantum mechanical object, that we can think of and evaluate unlimited amounts of concepts in the same instant.

3) to create an artificial brain equivalent to the human brain based on current technology, we'd probably have to use optic cables and microchips with electrons traveling in narrow valleys. I read a while back that we hit a barrier when it comes to how small to make these "electron highways" because the size of the electron creates spillover after a certain point. it limits the size of a microchip to only so small and only capable of processing a certain amount of information. Plus, processors as we know must make one calculation based on the previous one, and we are unsure if this accurately resembles the processes of the brain