Friday 15 February 2013

Brain Downloads for the Future?

A warm hearted congratulations to the consortia of the Human Brain Project, having won the highly sought after 1 billion from the EU as a flagship project.  Of course the task is to say the least, monumental; mapping the anatomy itself will be challenging, but the physiology is a completely new dimension; given that we are still learning how to define physiological processes in terms of mathematics.  Nevertheless, despite these challenges, the virtual brain offers possibilities when realised.  If a person's functional brain is successfully regenerated on computer so that the computer could run a simulation of the brain that is very faithful to the real person's, then in theory, this offers the intriguing possibility of Whole Brain Emulation or 'mind transfer', where the person's brain is preserved on a computing device so that if the real brain is either irreversibly damaged or the person died, the copy of the brain on computer could be downloaded..  Does this open the prospect of a form of quasi-immortality?  Big idea for a big project....