A South African scientist is working on the development of a digital brain as part of a project to detect the procession of mental disorders.
The European Union have granted Henry Makram, professor at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, ZAR12 billion (US$1.2 billion) to create the brain as a supercomputer.
With more than 200 researches on the job to map 100 billion brain neurons and its 100,000 billion synapses connection of the human brain on a single computer system, the project will take an estimated 10 years to complete.
Markram told the Sunday Times: “What we are developing is a new foundation, a new instrument – a telescope – that will allow one to look deep into the brain, offering a more systematical approach to any disease”.
Makram, also the father of an autistic son, believes the findings of the project will “help [them] find a new way to treat autism”.
Further possibilities for the treatment of other diseases such as Alzheimer’s are also expected to be discovered with this research project.
HumanIPO reported last month on a telescope development for the detection of breast cancer.
The institute is also working on a small under-the-skin blood testing device, as was discussed at the recent Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference in France last week.
