Emergent dynamics in a reconstruction of a neocortical microcircuit

It has been called "the most complete simulation of a piece of excitable brain matter to date", by Christof Koch, President and CSO of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle [1]. After briefly reviewing the... [ view full abstract ]

It has been called "the most complete simulation of a piece of
excitable brain matter to date", by Christof Koch, President and CSO
of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle [1]. After
briefly reviewing the HPC-based data integration and reconstruction
workflow, I will focus on simulation methods and results obtained
using the digital reconstruction of the microcircuitry of
somatosensory cortex of P14 rat, running on the "BlueBrain IV" IBM
BlueGene/Q system hosted at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center
(CSCS). We validated and explored the spontaneous and sensory evoked
dynamics of the microcircuit, and discovered previously unknown
biological mechanisms by integrating decades of antomical and
physiological Neuroscience data [2].

[1] Koch, C. et al. A Biological Imitation Game. Cell 163:2, 277-280 (2015).
[2] Markram, H., Muller, E., et al. Reconstruction and Simulation of Neocortical Microcircuitry. Cell 163:2, 456-495 (2015).

About the speaker:
Eilif Muller is born and raised in western Canada (BC and Alberta). He received his B.Sc. (Honours) in Mathematical Physics from Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada in 2001, and his Ph.D. in Physics (magna cum laude) from the University of Heidelberg, Germany in 2007. Since 2011, Eilif leads the team of researchers building, validating and simulating digital reconstructions of neocortical tissue at the Blue Brain Project, a leading simulation partner of the Human Brain Project - a European Commission (EC) Future and Emerging Technology (FET) Flagship initiative.