Hardware human brain? Does computer engineering improve our understanding of brain connectivity?

Talk with Jan Slaby, Freie Universität Berlin, Junior Professor for Philosophy, and Daniel Margulies, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Leipzig.

The "Human Brain Project" aims to simulate a human brain with the help of computer engineering. Connecitivity is the key word. But does the human brain really work like a computer?

Until recently, the brain was the model for computer research; however, in the meantime, the relationship has been reversed. Nowadays, computers are not only a tool used by neuroscience - they actually provide the model for understanding the brain. Brain researchers attempt to make structural models from computer science applicable for the reconstruction of work processes and structures in the brain. The recently announced “Human Brain Project” has the ambitious objective of simulating the brain on computers and is based on ideas from the computer sciences, such as connectivity, computer-supported linking of networks. But does the human brain really work like a computer? To what extent are the two systems really comparable? And if this is the case, can the reconstruction of the brain’s ‘hardware’ help us understand feelings, thoughts, inspiration and creativity?

Max Planck Science Gallery

Markgrafenstrasse 37 | 10117 Berlin-Mitte

March 13, 2014, 7 p.m. – 8.30 p.m

Free admission