Plenary Presentation

The Blue Brain Project

Sean Hill, Ph.D.
Henry Markram, Ph.D.

Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne
Switzerland

Saturday, 23 August, 8:00 - 8:50
Exhibition Hall A

Abstract
The Blue Brain Project began in July 2005 as a collaboration between Professor Henry Markram from the Brain Mind Institute at the
EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne) and IBM (International Business Machines), aimed at modelling the neocortical
column. The neocortical column represents the basic functional unit of the cerebral cortex in mammals that underlies nearly all
sensory and cognitive processing. These units are repeated millions of times across the cortex, with the basic structure remaining
the fundamentally the same from mouse to man. From its origins IBMs BlueGene/L supercomputer and more than 10 years of
experimental data from Professor Markrams laboratory the project has grown to include an international multidisciplinary team
of over 35 experimentalists, modellers and computer scientists. The goal of Phase I was to build a cellular level model of the
somatosensory cortex of a 2- week-old rat corresponding to the dimensions of a neocortical column as defined by the dendritic
arborizations of the layer 5 pyramidal neurons. We have achieved this goal by developing an entirely new data-driven process for
creating, validating and researching the neocortical column. Reverse-engineering a portion of the neocortex involves capturing
many levels of detail about microscopic cells and fibers living, dynamic entities that are invisible to the naked eye. Modelling
efforts must examine the experimental design and weigh the potential inconsistencies and relevance of the resulting data to the
construction and refinement of the model. A simulation-based research process requires that this consistency check occur in an
ongoing fashion. The simulation itself now serves as an essential tool for integrating experimental data and defining new
experiments that can precisely gather the information necessary to capture the complete biological detail.

Biographical Sketches
Sean Hill is the Blue Brain Project Manager for Computational Neuroscience. Dr. Hill received his Ph.D. in Computational
Neuroscience from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland where he investigated the computational role of the auditory
thalamocortical circuitry in the rat. He subsequently held postdoctoral positions at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla,
California and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In the course of his research, Hill has developed numerous large-scale models
of neural systems and is the designer/developer of the general-purpose neural simulator Synthesis. As part of his research, he
developed the first large-scale model of the cat visual thalamocortical system that replicates neural activity during wakefulness and
sleep. He began his work with the Blue Brain project as a member of the Computational Biology Group at the IBM T.J. Watson
Research Center in 2006 and became a Blue Brain employee in 2008. His research interests include the use of biologically-realistic
models to study the role of emergent phenomena in information processing, network connectivity and synaptic plasticity in the
central nervous system, from the neocortical column to the whole brain, and across different arousal conditions including waking
and sleep.

Henry Markram is the Founder and Co-Director of EPFL's Brain Mind Institute and Director of the Blue Brain Project. He obtained
his Ph.D from the Weizmann Institute of Science where he discovered a link between acetylcholine and memory mechanisms. At
the Max Planck Institute he discovered calcium transients in dendrites evoked by sub-threshold activity and by single action
potentials propagating back into dendrites. He also began studying the connectivity between neocortical neurons. Markram
discovered Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP) by altering the precise millisecond relative timing of single pre- and post-
synaptic action potentials, which revealed a highly precise learning mechanism operating between neurons. He moved back to the
Weizmann Institute where he started his systematic reverse engineering of the neocortical microcircuitry. He discovered a number
of key principles of microcircuit structure and design and a novel view of synaptic learning called redistribution of synaptic
efficacy. Based on the emergent dynamics of the neocortical microcircuit he and Wolfgang Maass developed the theory of liquid
computing to explain computing in high entropy states. In 2002, he moved to EPFL as full professor and founder/director of the
Brain Mind Institute. At the BMI, Markram developed state of art technologies to obtain a detailed blueprint of the neocortical
column. He launched the Blue Brain Project with the support of IBM in 2005 to rebuild and simulate the neocortical column and is
expanding the BBP to simulate the whole brain of mammals. Markram has received numerous awards and published over 80
papers.