I'm going to paraphrase something I heard from a neuroscientist and a computer scientist in a discussion once: Spiking neural networks (of which brains are an

I'm going to paraphrase something I heard from a neuroscientist and a computer scientist in a discussion once: Spiking neural networks (of which brains are an example of) are a special case of mathematics called a petri network. We know how to run those mathematically, so in principle there's nothing stopping us from running a brain now. And yes, computers are definitely powerful enough to run some brains, as OpenWorm has demonstrated. You can try that for yourself, if you have the ability to run docker containers and a modest video card for the computations. It's even available on Docker Hub... To run the emulation of a spiking neural network, you need three things: 1. A map of all the connections in that network (it's Adjacency List, or connectome) 2. A listing of all the rules that the nodes of the network execute 3. A computer powerful enough to execute those rules And that's it. Sounds simple on paper, but in practice, we are still working on our ability to scan large biological networks. * The fly connectome here gives the first part of the process; we still need the ruleset for the individual neurons to calculate what they do correctly. There's been quite a bit of work on this part of the problem, looking into the field of optogenetic, and neural staining (brainbow) will give you a fair idea of the progress. Also, the Allen Labs in Seattle has been doing some outstanding work categorizing the different neurons, and the rules by which they operate. According to what I've seen of their work, it may be possible to get by with a (really sophisticated) combination of a lookup table and calculation to determine spiking rules, but I am not a specialist in that area, so take my observations with a sufficient dose of salt.