Researchers said a new
computerised model of part of a rat's cortex predicts connections
between neurons, which could help explain how the brains of mammals -
including humans - works.
“This is a major breakthrough
because it would otherwise take decades, if not centuries, to map the
location of each synapse in the brain,” said Henry Markram, head of the
Blue Brain Project at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de
Lausanne.
Launched in 2005, the project aims to develop a virtual mammal brain by 2018.
One of the greatest challenges in
neuroscience is to map the synaptic connections between neurons, the
statement said, dubbing the so-called “connectome” the “holy grail that
will explain how information flows.”
To reconstruct a rat's “virtual
cortical microcircuit,” the researchers used data about the geometrical
and electrical properties of neurons compiled over 20 years from
experiments on slices of living brain tissue.
“Each neuron in the circuit was
reconstructed into a 3D model on a powerful Blue Gene supercomputer,”
the statement said. “About 10,000 of virtual neurons were packed into a
3D space in random positions according to the density and ratio of
morphological types found in corresponding living tissue.”
According
to the researchers, whose findings are published in this week's issue
of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the locations on
the model matched that of synapses found in the equivalent real-brain
circuit with 75 to 95 percent accuracy.
“Overall, this work represents a
major acceleration in the ability to construct detailed models of the
nervous system,” according to the statement.
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