Blue Brain Project - UPM
Introduction
The Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) is one of the participating institutions in the BlueBrain Project (BBP). UPM is deeply involved in the objectives and visions of the BBP being engaged as one of the collaboration institutions close to the project core.
The participation of the UPM in the BBP is performed under the name BB-UPM. BB-UPM organizes the BlueBrain-Project collaboration activities directly coordinated by the UPM. These activities include different tasks in several research lines. Some of the research lines which are close-linked to neurological experimentation are performed in collaboration with Instituto Cajal (CSIC) while the research line on informatics is achieved with the participation of different computer science partners.
Project Description
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.
In July 2005, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and IBM announced an exciting new research initiative - a project to create a biologically accurate, functional model of the brain using IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer. Analogous in scope to the Genome Project, the Blue Brain will provide a huge leap in our understanding of brain function and dysfunction and help us explore solutions to intractable problems in mental health and neurological disease.
At the end of 2006, the Blue Brain project had created a model of the basic functional unit of the brain, the neocortical column. At the push of a button, the model could reconstruct biologically accurate neurons based on detailed experimental data, and automatically connect them in a biological manner, a task that involves positioning around 30 million synapses in precise 3D locations.
In November, 2007, the Blue Brain project reached an important milestone and the conclusion of its first Phase, with the announcement of an entirely new data-driven process for creating, validating, and researching the neocortical column.
More information available in Blue Brain Project web site.
Project Phases
- Phase I: Phase I has been completed by the end of 2007 and it is the starting point of the next phase in which UPM is mainly involved.
- Phase II: Although UPM has been involved in BBP since the early stages of the project, mainly in the Visualization tasks, the participation will be more representative in this new phase.
