The Blue Brain project.--Building a human brain.

[Tartan Pixie]

I wonder if the blue brain's going to have emergent properties at all?

As I understand it memory is stored holistically, that is to say if you get brain damaged in a car crash you don't forget half a book you've read. Unlike a computer, where information is stored in discreet bits, memory in a damaged brain becomes fuzzier, just like a hologram when the photographic plate has been damaged.

I'm not sure we understand this process very well so it's hard to see how they could build it in to a simulation. It would be quite something however if similar properties emerge in the blue brain, despite it only being a mechanical copy of our current understanding of the human brain.

[carmonk]

Tartan Pixie said:

I wonder if the blue brain's going to have emergent properties at all?

As I understand it memory is stored holistically, that is to say if you get brain damaged in a car crash you don't forget half a book you've read. Unlike a computer, where information is stored in discreet bits, memory in a damaged brain becomes fuzzier, just like a hologram when the photographic plate has been damaged.

Not really. It's true memories aren't all stored in one place but they aren't stored holographically. Location of memory storage depends on memory type, nature, age, etc, plus storage isn't the full story as memory loss is often a case of inability to retrieve information and not that information disappearing. Sometimes 'lost' memories can be retrieved subconsciously showing that the data is still there but the recognition process has been damaged.