1. SEMINAR REPORT ON
BLUE BRAIN TECHNOLOGY
Titash Mandal
1215014

2. WHY THE
NAME BLUE
BRAIN?
Blue is the color of the mind and is essentially
soothing; it affects us mentally, rather than
the physical reaction we have to red. Strong
blues will stimulate clear thought and lighter,
soft blues will calm the mind and aid
concentration. Consequently it is serene and
mentally calming. It is the color of clear
communication.
Blue Gene is an IBM project aimed at
designing supercomputers that can reach
operating speeds in the PFLOPS (petaFLOPS)
range, with low power consumption. On the
basis of this project the name for the Blue
Brain project was decided.

3. What is a brain?
Biological Definition
A brain is an organ made up
of soft nervous tissue
contained in the skull of
vertebrates, functioning as
the coordinating centre of
sensation and intellectual
and nervous activity.The
human brain is the main
organ of the human central
nervous system.
The brain essentially serves as
the body’s information
processing center. It receives
signals from sensory neurons
(nerve cell bodies and their
axons and dendrites)in the
central and peripheral nervous
systems, and in response it
generates and sends new
signals that instruct the
corresponding parts of the
body to move or react in some
way.
Problem
Intelligence is limited to
the human’s body till life.
After death, that
intelligent brain stops
working. With the help of
the virtual brain,
perceptions and
intelligence remains alive
even after the death of a
person.
Function

4. We often face difficulties in remembering thing such as people’s names, their
birthdays, and the spellings of words, proper grammar, important dates, history,
facts etc. In the busy life everyone want to be relaxed. Can’t we use any machine
to assist for all these?
“Virtual brain may be the solution to it.”
What if we upload ourselves into computer, we were simply aware of a computer,
or maybe, what if we lived in a computer as a program?
WHAT LEAD TO THE IDEA OF THE BLUE BRAIN?

5. Main Motivations behind blue brain
A bottom up approach
towards building a
thinking machine.
To create a database of
all neuroscientific
research results and
related past stories.
Scientific curiosity
about consciousness
and the human mind.
Treatments of Brain
dysfunctioning.

6. INTRODUCTION
INTO THE
TECHNOLOGY
The Blue Brain Project began in July
2005 as a collaboration between
Professor Henry Markram from the
Brain Mind Institute at the EPFL (Ecole
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
and IBM (International Business
Machines), aimed at modelling the
neocortical column. The neocortical
column represents the basic functional
unit of the cerebral cortex in mammals
that underlies nearly all sensory and
cognitive processing. These units are
repeated millions of times across the
cortex, with the basic structure
remaining the fundamentally the same
from mouse to man.

7. WHAT IS A VIRTUAL BRAIN?
Virtual brain is an artificial brain,
which does not actually look like the
natural brain, but can act as the
brain. It can think like brain, take
decisions based on the past
experience,and response as the
natural brain can. It is possible by
using a supercomputer, with a huge
amount of storage capacity,
processing power and an interface
between the human brain and this
artificial one.
Through this interface the data
stored in the natural brain can be
up loaded into the computer. So
the brain and the knowledge,
intelligence of anyone can be kept
and used for ever, even after the
death of the person.

8. MAIN STEPS TO BUILD VIRTUAL BRAIN
STEP DIAGRAM DATA ACQUISITION
In Data Acquisition, we
need to study different
types of neurons and
catalogue them. It involves
taking brain slices and
placing them under a
microscope, measuring the
shape and electrical activity
of individual neurons.
DATA ACQUISITION
Form, function and
positioning of neurons are
obtained by translating
these observations into
mathematical algorithms.
By the help of these
algorithms, biologically-
realistic virtual neurons
ready for simulation are
generated.

9. Simulation
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Whole brain emulation (WBE) or mind
uploading (sometimes called "mind
copying" or "mind transfer") is the
hypothetical process of scanning mental
state (including long-term memory and
"self") of a particular brain substrate and
copying it to a computational device, such
as a digital, analog, quantum-based or
software-based artificial neural network.
The computational device could then run a
simulation model of the brain information
processing, such that it responds in
essentially the same way as the original
brain.

10. Storing nerve impulses
BLUE GENE ARCHITECTURE COMPONENTS

11. INPUT
In the nervous system of our body, neurons are
responsible for message passing. Electric impulses
are produced by sensory cells which are received by
the neurons. Further, electric impulses (through the
silicon chips of artificial neurons) are transferred to
the brain by neurons.
INTERPRETATION
Brain receives the electric
impulses from the neurons which
are interpreted by means of
registers. Different states of brain
can be accomplished by the
different values in these registers.
OUTPUT
On the basis of the states of the registers, the
electric impulses are then received by the sensory
cells to respond .The sensory cells and which part
of our body is going to receive that impulse ,
depends on the state of the neurons in the brain at
that time.
MEMORY
We can store certain information (states)
permanently in our brain by certain neurons .On
the basis of our requirement, the brain interprets
those states and thus past things can be gathered.
To do so we demand the neurons, to permanently
show the clear vision of the Brain’s States.

12. UPLOADING HUMAN
BRAIN
Nanobots, a very small robot, are the most
promising factor for uploading. These robots
are small enough to travel throughout our
circulatory system. Traveling into the spine and
brain, they will be able to monitor the activity
and structure of our central nervous system.
They will be able to provide an interface with
computers that is as close as our mind can be
while we still reside in our biological form.
Nanobots could also carefully scan the
structure of our brain, providing a complete
readout of the connections. This information,
when entered into a computer, could then
continue to function as us. Thus the data
stored in the entire brain.

13. SCOPE OF THE PROJECT
The Blue Brain Project is the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer
the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction
through detailed simulations.
The project will search for insights into how human beings think and remember.
It could lead to a new generation of information-based, customized medicine.
Scientists think that blue brain could also help to cure the Parkinson's disease.
The brain circuitry is in a complex state of flux, the brain rewiring itself every
moment of its existence. If the scientists can crack open the secret of how and
why the brain does it, the knowledge could lead to new breed of
supercomputers.

14. PAST AND FUTURE
RESEARCH PLANS
By 2005, the first single cellular model was completed.
In November 2007,the project reported the end of the
first phase, delivering a data-driven process for
creating, validating, and researching the neocortical
column. The first artificial cellular neocortical column
of 10,000 cells was built by 2008. By July 2011, a
cellular mesocircuit of 100 neocortical columns with a
million cells in total was built. A cellular rat brain is
planned for 2014 with 100 mesocircuits totalling a
hundred million cells. Finally a cellular human brain is
predicted possible by 2023 equivalent to 1000 rat
brains with a total of a hundred billion cells.

15. The project is currently busy with the publishing of
the initial results in scientific literature, and pursuing
two separate goals:
1. Construction of a simulation on the molecular
level, which is desirable since it allows studying
the effects of gene expression;
2. Simplification of the neocortical column to allow
for parallel simulation of large numbers of
connected columns, with the ultimate goal of
simulating a whole neocortex .
In 2015, scientists at EPFL developed a quantitative
model of the previously unknown relationship between
the brain cells astrocytes and neurons.
CURRENT WORKS

16. LIMITATIONS
We might end up becoming
more dependent upon the
computer systems.
Computer viruses will pose an
increasingly critical threat.
Fear is found today with respect
to human cloning.
Others may use technical
knowledge against us.

17. CONCLUSION
The Blue Brain Project is assumed to be the first one to explore about a true
“Artificial Intelligence” via the process of reverse engineering and also the
effort to reverse engineering a human brain. The vision behind Virtual Brain
will help shed some light on some aspects of human recognition. The Blue
Brain Project aims to build a full computer model of a functioning brain to
simulate drug treatments or any other brain related problems.

18. REFERENCES
“Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society”, 2008. EMBS 2008.30th
Annual International Conference of the IEEE.
Henry Markram, “The Blue Brain Project”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2006
February.
“Project Milestones”.
BlueBrain.http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/Jahia/site/bluebrain/op/edit/pid/19085
Simulated brain closer to thought BBC News 22 April 2009.
Blue Gene:
http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene
Graham-Rowe, Duncan. “Mission to build a
simulated brain begins”, NewSci-entist, June
2005. pp. 1879-85.

19. THANK YOU