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Our brain consists of billions of neurons which basically work with all the incoming data from our senses, handle our consciousness, emotions and creativity as well as our hormone system, etc.
So I'm completely new to this topic but doesn't each neuron have a fixed function? E.g.: If a signal of strength x enters, if the last signal was x ms ago, redirect it.
From what I've learned in biology about our nerves system which includes our brain because both consist of simple neurons, it seems to me as our brain is one big, complicated computer.
Maybe so complicated that things such as intelligence and cognition become possible?
As the most complicated things about a neuron pretty much are the chemical aspects on generating an electric singal, keeping itself alive, and eventually segmenting itself, it should be pretty easy emulating some on a computer, or? You won't have to worry about keeping your virtual neuron alive, or?
In my question I'm leaving out the following aspects:
I don't know much about this topic, please tell me if I got anything wrong :)
(My secret goal: Make a copy of my brain and store it on some 10 million TB HDD and make someone start it up in the future)
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However, the challenge is a complex one, as the human brain contains 86 billion brain cells (known as neurons) each with an average of 7,000 connections to other neurons (known as synapses). Current computer power is insufficient to model a entire human brain at this level of interconnectedness.
For example, robots and computers are rarely autonomous in the biological sense; they definitely cannot replicate, re-structure or even recover from harm by themselves. However, these issues can be overcome in the future, at least in a functional way.
Thus, we could say that 80% of human-scale whole brain simulation will be accomplished when a human-scale cerebellum is built and simulated on a computer.
If we model the brain as a simple neural network, then it would be equivalent to a machine that requires 1016 calculations per second and 1013 bits of memory.
A neuron-like circuit can be built with a handful of transistors. Let's say it takes about a dozen transistors on average. (See http://diwww.epfl.ch/lami/team/vschaik/eap/neurons.html for an example.)
A brain-sized circuit would require 100 billion such neurons (more or less).
That's 1.2 trillion transistors.
A quad-core Itanium has 2 billion transistors.
You'd need a server rack with 600 quad-core processors to be brain-sized. Think $15M US to purchase the servers. You'll need power management and cooling plus real-estate to support this mess.
One significant issue in simulating the brain is scale. The actual brain only dissipates a few watts. Power consumption is 3 square meals per day. A pint of gin. Maintenance is 8 hours of downtime. Real estate is a 42-foot sailboat (22 Net Tons of volume as ships are measured) and a place to drop the hook.
A server cage with 600 quad-core processors uses a lot more energy, cooling and maintenance. It would require two full-time people to keep this "brain-sized" server farm running.
It seems simpler to just teach the two people what you know and skip the hardware investment.
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