July 9, 2014
There is a controversial topic within neuroscience community in Europe about the HUMAN BRAIN PROJECT, www.humanbrainproject.eu, which was introduced by European commission with Euro 1.2 billion. Cool!! Euro 1.2 billion is huge amount of money and every researcher will fight for it of course. Nevertheless, it was reported that more than 100 leading scientists claimed to boycott this project. What they are arguing for?
"The changes sidelined cognitive scientists who study high-level brain functions, such as thought and behaviour. Without them, the brain simulation will be built from the bottom up, drawing on more fundamental science, such as studies of individual neurons."
"The rationale of the Human Brain Project is a plan for data: what do we do with all this data? This is a very exciting ICT project that will bring completely new tools and capabilities to all of neuroscience"
Read this article for details:
Scientists threaten to boycott €1.2bn Human Brain Project
This remind me the HUMAN GENOME PROJECT. It was a very successfully project in the past and brought both science and technology to a much higher level in nucleic acids studies. Those new technologies developed are now widely being applied in biolabs and bloom the research in the field. Can Human Brain Project follows a similar model? Why not?
image source: www.humanbrainproject.eu
