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I work on parts of this project. No one outside of Markrams small close circle thought HBP would do what he promised, but it was rather seen as a way to fund a

I work on parts of this project. No one outside of Markrams small close circle thought HBP would do what he promised, but it was rather seen as a way to fund ambitious computational neuroscience projects otherwise unimaginable. For example, Neuromorphic chips have been ever present within HBP. We are building new multiscale simulation tools to tackle neuro degenerative diseases. The list goes on. Simulating a human brain itself was just the tag line, technically already accomplished by eg Izhikevich, TheVirtualBrain project, Eliasmith's SPAUN among others. edit despite working within the project I definitely think a critical view of such large funding is essential, so articles like this are welcome

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
p1esk 7y ago
Simulating a human brain itself was just the tag line, technically already accomplished by eg Izhikevich, TheVirtualBrain project, Eliasmith's SPAUN among others. No. No one has simulated a human brain. All those projects have simulated something that might vaguely resemble some of the brain's structures or operations, but we know so little about the whole thing that it was pretty much a pointless exercise. HBP has been different from all of them because they attempted to do the true bottom up approach, not feasible without massive resources. As the article states, it turned out that even given the massive resources the task is just too difficult currently.
- derefr 7y ago
  I think you're ignoring the difference between a simulation (or model) and an emulation. A bottom-up approach produces an emulation. AFAIK, nobody has ever claimed to be trying to produce a human whole-brain emulation in the style of https://neurokernel.github.io/ https://neurokernel.github.io/. It's a problem that is obviously intractible right now.
  - wuliwong 7y ago
    I don't think what you are saying is correct. Isn't an emulator something that takes the same inputs and produces the same outputs? I don't think "bottom-up" has anything to do with it.
  - krastanov 7y ago
    I doubt most people reading the phrase "simulating a human brain" will make the distinction between simulating and emulating. The distinction is very technical and simply does not exist in the everyday use of the word "simulate".
    - RandomTisk 7y ago
      As a layman, I imagine the simulation would have to account for any one of the thousands of different compounds and chemicals in the brain where emulating it might be easier but a lot less useful, like testing drugs on mice versus humans, never knowing what real difference will make an important one.
    - marmaduke 7y ago
      And yet the distinction is important as we are discussing a project on the very topic. I don't think anyone playing SimCity thinks there's a whole real city running on their CPU. And certainly no one has a heart attack if you say SimCity is a simulation of a whole city.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    If any model counts, then I can "simulate a human brain" as a sphere on a stick figure given five minutes in a physics sim. We need to have some standard, and I would say the bare minimum is modeling each neuron in an ultra-simple way along with the connections between them.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Depending on what your doing modeling individual nerve cells may be pointless. For example, a stroke simulation may care a lot more about blood flow than communication between nerves.
- marmaduke 7y ago
  "every model is wrong, some are useful", models of whole brain exist and reproduce aspects of experimental data. My day job is building and evaluating such models; we have one on seizure propagation that is entering clinical trial.
  - p1esk 7y ago
    Would you call a thermal model of a brain (3d heatmap) a "model of a whole brain"? The only "model of a whole brain" we have currently is the one of C. elegans, and even that's debatable because it does not model chemical processes which modulate neural activities, and therefore does not provide an accurate input/output mapping (in general).
    - marmaduke 7y ago
      > thermal model of a brain No, it doesn't predict activity from parameters. > C. elegans, and even that's debatable because it does not model chemical processes "the map is not the territory". This sort of criticism isn't even scientific
      - dTal 7y ago
        A thermal model sure does predict brain activity from parameters. I can say with high confidence that the brain will have very little activity at 0 degrees C.
        marmaduke 7y ago
        That's a narrow range of identifiability with no relevance to the data we collect on a daily basis or the scientific questions being asked (beyond of course that it is a pedantic example)
      - p1esk 7y ago
        the map is not the territory Not sure what you mean.
- yazanobeidi 7y ago
  You should take another look at Eliasmith’s work. The neural engineering framework aims to be biologically plausible, with some assumptions made to simplify the math. Cellular processes are not the focus of the model. It however attempts to replicate these dynamics with simplified “components”. It’s one of the only, if not the only, neural models that is consistently supported by experimental data. Their website is https://nengo.ai https://nengo.ai and I am not affiliated with them just an alum that took his course.
  - p1esk 7y ago
    I'm not against modeling aspects of the brain based on what we know, just don't call that "whole brain" simulation/model.
    - marmaduke 7y ago
      What would you call SimCity if not a city simulator?
      - AstralStorm 7y ago
        It's a city simulator, not specific city simulator or even close. It is not accurate either as accuracy was not the main goal, but fun. Human brain is a very specific and complex brain which we do not understand - vastly less than even cities at any scale. And to produce any useful answers, the model has to be accurate to some degree - and we don't know how much. HBP indeed had no question which it tried to answer - it's more like climbing a mountain because it exists.
      - p1esk 7y ago
        I have no problem with calling SimCity a “whole city” simulator. Why? Because we have a good functional model of a city. We understand its operation on any level. Not the case with the brain.
buboard 7y ago
> Neuromorphic chips have been ever present within HBP What kind of neuronal / plasticity models do these chips implement? If they are anything like what others are doing with integrate and fire neurons, these do not seem to align with the goals of the project. You need detailed, compartmental biophusical simulations and not abstracted, approximate models of neurons. Otherwise, we are already able to run such kinds of models with a large cluster.
- yigitdemirag 7y ago
  Disclaimer: Working on neuromorphic chips. Several options available but followings are superior to others in terms of capturing the real neuron/synapse behavior with a simple and compact VLSI implementation. For neurons: Exponential adaptive integrate and fire models @ real-time. For synapses: STD/STP + LTP/LTD circuits @ real-time.
  - buboard 7y ago
    Yes thats what i mean. IF models are approximations. I thought the HBP was implementing compartmental simulations. Also the models we have for LTP are at best speculative
    - yigitdemirag 7y ago
      Every model is an approximation :) I don't work at HBP, therefore can't speak for their implementations. These are the SoTA of nm engineering. What do you mean by compartmental simulation?
      - buboard 7y ago
        Multi compartmental models of neurons simulate the local voltage dynamics of membrane in detail , by considering the neuron as a graph of connected cylinders , and uses the cable equation along with hodgkin-huxley-like models to model the ionic channels of the membrane. It's the most detailed and closest to reality way to simulate neuronal dynamics. Most neuromorphic chips simulate much more abstracted, integrate and fire neurons. In both situations, plasticity is the big unknown because we know so little about it (and it's so complex). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-compartment_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-compartment_model
ggm 7y ago
it was rather seen as a way to fund ambitious computational neuroscience projects otherwise unimaginable. I don't mean to be petty, but I read that with a very intellectually dishonest tone: By misleading the goals, we secured funds to do what we really intended which wasn't sexy enough: Thats grounds to call in the research audit and close things down.
- dmix 7y ago
  I'm more curious why the "European Commission" is even giving extremely ambitious (aka extremely risky) research projects $1 billion dollars. That seems like a lot of money for any single project. > In 2013, the European Commission awarded his initiative—the Human Brain Project (HBP)—a staggering 1 billion euro grant (worth about $1.42 billion at the time).
  - Anon84 7y ago
    It's essentially a way of outsourcing management structures. Instead of having to handle and process 1000 $1M projects (and probably 20000 proposals) it awards a $1B project that is then in charge of managing that money and awarding subprojects, etc. It's also a good way of getting press and making sure that a fair amount of$ ends up in the pockets of your buddies working on a specific topic.
    - mhneu 7y ago
      This is why the US NIH gives out a lot of $3-5M R01 grants.
  - api 7y ago
    It would be far better to give one thousand risky cutting edge projects one million dollars.
    - pavlov 7y ago
      The various European governments already do that kind of thing through their national agencies. The thinking behind these giant EU projects is to fund larger-scale ambitions over a decade or more. (Not saying it's been the best use of money so far, but that was the aim anyway.)
Bukhmanizer 7y ago
As someone who works in computational neuroscience, frankly I don't see how Markram is any different from a charlatan. Pretty much every researcher wants money to fund ambitious projects, but you can't just go around making all kinds of nonsense claims without being able to back them up. The HBP has produced some good research, but for the amount of funding they've received I would have expected much, much more. Ultimately I think the fault lies within the funding structure. So much of scientific funding incentivizes bold and brash statements and plans, but very little consideration is given towards having the technical ability to execute those plans. For a project of this size and scope, I would have wanted to see significant investments in computational infrastructure and software/hardware development very early on. At least the investment would have yielded something to build upon. Imagine if the Apollo mission tried to go to the moon with parts built from a Yugo. It wouldn't matter how many smart mathematicians you hire, or how skilled your navigators are, you just aren't going to get to the moon. Unfortunately computational infrastructure just isn't sexy enough to invest in, and I would say as a whole (there are some exceptions), neuroscience leadership just does not have the technical expertise to handle these kinds of projects yet.
- marmaduke 7y ago
  I think the focus on Markram is detrimental to the EU community making good use of the people and projects left in the wake of the anti-Markram movement. Still I agree infrastructure is a really hard problem, which is not going to get solved anytime soon. Just as an example, federated identity across HPC resources isn't even on the table, even though they are working on the next funding iteration. This means you need 3+ accounts to get anything done in the HBP way.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

p1esk 7y ago

Simulating a human brain itself was just the tag line, technically already accomplished by eg Izhikevich, TheVirtualBrain project, Eliasmith's SPAUN among others. No. No one has simulated a human brain. All those projects have simulated something that might vaguely resemble some of the brain's structures or operations, but we know so little about the whole thing that it was pretty much a pointless exercise. HBP has been different from all of them because they attempted to do the true bottom up approach, not feasible without massive resources. As the article states, it turned out that even given the massive resources the task is just too difficult currently.

derefr 7y ago
I think you're ignoring the difference between a simulation (or model) and an emulation. A bottom-up approach produces an emulation. AFAIK, nobody has ever claimed to be trying to produce a human whole-brain emulation in the style of https://neurokernel.github.io/ https://neurokernel.github.io/. It's a problem that is obviously intractible right now.
- wuliwong 7y ago
  I don't think what you are saying is correct. Isn't an emulator something that takes the same inputs and produces the same outputs? I don't think "bottom-up" has anything to do with it.
- krastanov 7y ago
  I doubt most people reading the phrase "simulating a human brain" will make the distinction between simulating and emulating. The distinction is very technical and simply does not exist in the everyday use of the word "simulate".
  - RandomTisk 7y ago
    As a layman, I imagine the simulation would have to account for any one of the thousands of different compounds and chemicals in the brain where emulating it might be easier but a lot less useful, like testing drugs on mice versus humans, never knowing what real difference will make an important one.
  - marmaduke 7y ago
    And yet the distinction is important as we are discussing a project on the very topic. I don't think anyone playing SimCity thinks there's a whole real city running on their CPU. And certainly no one has a heart attack if you say SimCity is a simulation of a whole city.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  If any model counts, then I can "simulate a human brain" as a sphere on a stick figure given five minutes in a physics sim. We need to have some standard, and I would say the bare minimum is modeling each neuron in an ultra-simple way along with the connections between them.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Depending on what your doing modeling individual nerve cells may be pointless. For example, a stroke simulation may care a lot more about blood flow than communication between nerves.
marmaduke 7y ago
"every model is wrong, some are useful", models of whole brain exist and reproduce aspects of experimental data. My day job is building and evaluating such models; we have one on seizure propagation that is entering clinical trial.
- p1esk 7y ago
  Would you call a thermal model of a brain (3d heatmap) a "model of a whole brain"? The only "model of a whole brain" we have currently is the one of C. elegans, and even that's debatable because it does not model chemical processes which modulate neural activities, and therefore does not provide an accurate input/output mapping (in general).
  - marmaduke 7y ago
    > thermal model of a brain No, it doesn't predict activity from parameters. > C. elegans, and even that's debatable because it does not model chemical processes "the map is not the territory". This sort of criticism isn't even scientific
    - dTal 7y ago
      A thermal model sure does predict brain activity from parameters. I can say with high confidence that the brain will have very little activity at 0 degrees C.
      - marmaduke 7y ago
        That's a narrow range of identifiability with no relevance to the data we collect on a daily basis or the scientific questions being asked (beyond of course that it is a pedantic example)
    - p1esk 7y ago
      the map is not the territory Not sure what you mean.
yazanobeidi 7y ago
You should take another look at Eliasmith’s work. The neural engineering framework aims to be biologically plausible, with some assumptions made to simplify the math. Cellular processes are not the focus of the model. It however attempts to replicate these dynamics with simplified “components”. It’s one of the only, if not the only, neural models that is consistently supported by experimental data. Their website is https://nengo.ai https://nengo.ai and I am not affiliated with them just an alum that took his course.
- p1esk 7y ago
  I'm not against modeling aspects of the brain based on what we know, just don't call that "whole brain" simulation/model.
  - marmaduke 7y ago
    What would you call SimCity if not a city simulator?
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      It's a city simulator, not specific city simulator or even close. It is not accurate either as accuracy was not the main goal, but fun. Human brain is a very specific and complex brain which we do not understand - vastly less than even cities at any scale. And to produce any useful answers, the model has to be accurate to some degree - and we don't know how much. HBP indeed had no question which it tried to answer - it's more like climbing a mountain because it exists.
    - p1esk 7y ago
      I have no problem with calling SimCity a “whole city” simulator. Why? Because we have a good functional model of a city. We understand its operation on any level. Not the case with the brain.

buboard 7y ago

> Neuromorphic chips have been ever present within HBP What kind of neuronal / plasticity models do these chips implement? If they are anything like what others are doing with integrate and fire neurons, these do not seem to align with the goals of the project. You need detailed, compartmental biophusical simulations and not abstracted, approximate models of neurons. Otherwise, we are already able to run such kinds of models with a large cluster.

yigitdemirag 7y ago
Disclaimer: Working on neuromorphic chips. Several options available but followings are superior to others in terms of capturing the real neuron/synapse behavior with a simple and compact VLSI implementation. For neurons: Exponential adaptive integrate and fire models @ real-time. For synapses: STD/STP + LTP/LTD circuits @ real-time.
- buboard 7y ago
  Yes thats what i mean. IF models are approximations. I thought the HBP was implementing compartmental simulations. Also the models we have for LTP are at best speculative
  - yigitdemirag 7y ago
    Every model is an approximation :) I don't work at HBP, therefore can't speak for their implementations. These are the SoTA of nm engineering. What do you mean by compartmental simulation?
    - buboard 7y ago
      Multi compartmental models of neurons simulate the local voltage dynamics of membrane in detail , by considering the neuron as a graph of connected cylinders , and uses the cable equation along with hodgkin-huxley-like models to model the ionic channels of the membrane. It's the most detailed and closest to reality way to simulate neuronal dynamics. Most neuromorphic chips simulate much more abstracted, integrate and fire neurons. In both situations, plasticity is the big unknown because we know so little about it (and it's so complex). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-compartment_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-compartment_model

ggm 7y ago

it was rather seen as a way to fund ambitious computational neuroscience projects otherwise unimaginable. I don't mean to be petty, but I read that with a very intellectually dishonest tone: By misleading the goals, we secured funds to do what we really intended which wasn't sexy enough: Thats grounds to call in the research audit and close things down.

dmix 7y ago
I'm more curious why the "European Commission" is even giving extremely ambitious (aka extremely risky) research projects $1 billion dollars. That seems like a lot of money for any single project. > In 2013, the European Commission awarded his initiative—the Human Brain Project (HBP)—a staggering 1 billion euro grant (worth about $1.42 billion at the time).
- Anon84 7y ago
  It's essentially a way of outsourcing management structures. Instead of having to handle and process 1000 $1M projects (and probably 20000 proposals) it awards a $1B project that is then in charge of managing that money and awarding subprojects, etc. It's also a good way of getting press and making sure that a fair amount of$ ends up in the pockets of your buddies working on a specific topic.
  - mhneu 7y ago
    This is why the US NIH gives out a lot of $3-5M R01 grants.
- api 7y ago
  It would be far better to give one thousand risky cutting edge projects one million dollars.
  - pavlov 7y ago
    The various European governments already do that kind of thing through their national agencies. The thinking behind these giant EU projects is to fund larger-scale ambitions over a decade or more. (Not saying it's been the best use of money so far, but that was the aim anyway.)

Bukhmanizer 7y ago

As someone who works in computational neuroscience, frankly I don't see how Markram is any different from a charlatan. Pretty much every researcher wants money to fund ambitious projects, but you can't just go around making all kinds of nonsense claims without being able to back them up. The HBP has produced some good research, but for the amount of funding they've received I would have expected much, much more. Ultimately I think the fault lies within the funding structure. So much of scientific funding incentivizes bold and brash statements and plans, but very little consideration is given towards having the technical ability to execute those plans. For a project of this size and scope, I would have wanted to see significant investments in computational infrastructure and software/hardware development very early on. At least the investment would have yielded something to build upon. Imagine if the Apollo mission tried to go to the moon with parts built from a Yugo. It wouldn't matter how many smart mathematicians you hire, or how skilled your navigators are, you just aren't going to get to the moon. Unfortunately computational infrastructure just isn't sexy enough to invest in, and I would say as a whole (there are some exceptions), neuroscience leadership just does not have the technical expertise to handle these kinds of projects yet.

marmaduke 7y ago
I think the focus on Markram is detrimental to the EU community making good use of the people and projects left in the wake of the anti-Markram movement. Still I agree infrastructure is a really hard problem, which is not going to get solved anytime soon. Just as an example, federated identity across HPC resources isn't even on the table, even though they are working on the next funding iteration. This means you need 3+ accounts to get anything done in the HBP way.