Baycrest Health Sciences & Baycrest Foundation Publications
Issue link: http://baycrest.uberflip.com/i/141186
Building a virtual brain Using high performance computers, the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest is leading an international effort to build the world's first "virtual" brain. Sounds like science fiction, but it could be science fact within a decade. The project requires uploading vast amounts of data from the brains of thousands of healthy people, including children, into powerful computers. The information is from magnetic resonance images of how brains are structured and how the different regions function when performing various tasks. "What the virtual brain is actually doing is taking these A team of neuroscientists from Canada, the United data and using computer models to regenerate how a States and Europe is using brain research data com- healthy human brain works as a whole," Dr. McIntosh bined with computational neuroscience in an attempt explains. This will allow the scientists to develop the first to build a working model of a brain that would simulate "electronic atlas" of all functional networks in the brain. what goes on in our heads as we recognize a face, read a book, listen to music, or do a myriad of other tasks. In addition to information gathered from healthy brains, data from persons with brain damage or Led by Dr. Randy McIntosh, Vice-President of Research disease will be incorporated so that experiments such at Baycrest and Director of the Rotman Research as giving the virtual brain a stroke, can be carried out Institute, this multi-million dollar project is akin to de- to see how it tries to recover. Down the road, a better coding the human genome in its potential to improve understanding of the effects of stroke and how the human health. A virtual brain that works not exactly brain attempts to re-stabilize could help doctors more like, but close to, a real brain could advance neurosci- directly target therapies for patients. ence far beyond where it is today, bringing new hope to millions of people worldwide whose brains have been damaged by disease or injury or who are at risk for such in the future. 9 Baycrest and baycrest foundation Annual Report 2009 | 2010