>>Essentially the Blue Brain project is a study in emergent behaviour, simulate something and its behaviour should emerge. That is exactly what the project lead

>>Essentially the Blue Brain project is a study in emergent behaviour, simulate something and its behaviour should emerge. That is exactly what the project leader claims in the article linked, I don't think even they expect it to be human behaviour because that is limited to beings that are humans. First, the neuron models will probably still be adjusted in a century. (For instance, I've seen papers just a few years old which discussed how water really worked; that doesn't mean the understanding of water isn't very, very good.) Second, the brain researchers claim the research using new tools are going incredibly fast; see the claim in the interview of more information every year -- than in all of the 20th century! (So the article from ten years ago seems a bit outdated -- also, membrane receptors is a hard problem which just recently has even been touched. The Blue Brain people claims that they started with a molecular level emulation of the brain and then optimized it). (Also note that the Blue Brains researchers are aware of differences between individual cells because of history, etc. They aren't idiots.) >>The problem with the approach is that a simulation, by definition is not the real thing and that it will always end up being an approximation. Third, I have a hard time thinking of a better way to learn than research groups like Blue Brain encoding the present knowledge in computer models -- to compare against the real systems. No one expects the models to be perfect at once. Fourth, I trust the reviewers of the papers the Blue Brain research group writes to do basic reality checks, e.g. glial cell influences (when/if they are found to have a large influence). That would just be a factor of two in complexity, for parallel models like this, Moore's law works well... Fifth, chemistry is generally slow -- there can't be too much happening in thought/reaction, so most stuff in a neuron's work is "prebuilt"; no, not with memcached but with structural changes while learning. (There is heavy evolutional pressure to optimize for speed.) How good the emulations will be after refinement etc, is a much later question. But the researchers are evaluating (quite) modular systems "from below" -- they can't be too complex, because there just aren't enough building blocks (i.e. not enough genes). It is a hard problem, but I don't see a reason why it should be impossible to reach good models. That doesn't matter, what is more important is that the researchers think so, too. >>Regarding the electro shock therapy, yes, that is true but it starts out assuming that the brains state is 'electrical', which it doesn't have to be at all. Well, give an alternative mechanism that isn't reset by electrical shocks or cooling down to low temperature (as with some surviving drowning victims in cold water or some operations.) (The point of Grand mal attacks was that I wondered if they were reset mechanisms.) Note that changes in protein expression would be quite easy to find. And that human nerve cells aren't that different from other animals, which has been experimented quite heavily on. I can't have any ideas, here (also note the "fifth" point above.) Do you have anything except conjecture? I don't have the time to keep discussing, sorry. Edit: Cleaned up and was too hurried to mark it up carefully above. Sorry, if anyone ever reads this. :-)