IBM claims to have simulated the cerebral cortex of a cat

IBM Corp. researchers reported that by a massive supercomputer, able to simulate the cerebral cortex of a cat, the most developed part of the brain.

The computer has 147,456 chips, more than most modern personal computers, which have only one or two processors. The IBM team also has 144 terabytes of main memory, equivalent to 100,000 times the capacity of a standard computer.

Previously, scientists have simulated the 40% of the brain of a mouse in 2006, 100% of the brain of a rat in 2007 and 1% of the human cerebral cortex this year, using ever larger supercomputers.

The latest technological advancement, presented at a supercomputing conference in Portland, Oregon, does not mean that the computer can think like a cat, or that it is the progenitor of a new breed of robogatos.

The simulation, which runs 100 times slower than the brain of a real cat, looked rather how thoughts are formed in the brain and how they work together the 1,000 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses in the brain of a cat.

The researchers created a program that sought to make the supercomputer, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to behave as it is believed that the brain behaves.

During an experiment, he showed the computer images of corporate logos, including one from IBM, and the scientists observed how different parts of the simulated brain working to figure out what was the image.

Dharmendra Mohd, manager of cognitive computing for IBM Research Unit and lead author of the research, said the experiment could lead to the creation of computers that rely less on "structured data" such as the sum of two plus two equals four.

He said the idea is to create teams that are capable of dealing with ambiguity, as the identification of a company logo, even if the image is blurred.

Such computers could incorporate mechanisms for receipt of information, equivalent to the senses of sight, touch and hearing to the decisions they make.