Brain Plasticity- Brain's Ability to Modify its Structure and Function

Brain has the capability to change itself and a new research is going to be conducted to investigate just that and find more about the what, why, how of this extraordinary cerebral process. The initial research team consists of prominent Neuroscientists from UC Berkely, Berkely lab, Livermore lab and Physicists, Engineers, Computer Scientists.

Brain plasticity forms the base for our ability to learn and improve ourselves. Brain keeps bettering its abilities with time, a lot fast during initial years but slowing as it gets older.

Named Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience (Kavli IFN), established as a partnership between The Kavli foundation and UCSF with an initial funding of 20 Million Dollars alongside additional startup funding, the Institute aims to develop greater insight into Brain plasticity with the edge coming from collaborating Physicists, Engineers and Computer Scientists. Kavli foundation has Pledged more than $100 million for this cause in association with its many University partners.

References:
1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2896818/

Image credits goes to respective sources.

Brain Simulation- Creating Digital Model of Human Brain

Henry Markram and his team of Europe's Blue Brain Project, the simulation core of Human Brain Project, claims to have created a digital copy of 0.3 mm^3 smidgen of rodent somatosensory cortex, using supercomputers. One of the most detailed Brain model yet, a great progress towards creating full simulation of Brain function. A full simulation of Brain function means we will be knowing exactly how the Brain does all that it does, which is going to cause groundbreaking innovations, forever changing our lives, for good hopefully.

"The electrical behavior of the virtual brain tissue was simulated on supercomputers and found to match the behavior observed in a number of experiments on the brain," the team posted on their project page. As promising as it looks, we are definitely going to need a lot more powerful supercomputers to create the Brain Activity Map of Human Brain or perhaps a Quantum Computer will be needed. Results were published in journal Cell.

References:
1) http://www.nature.com/news/computer-modelling-brain-in-a-box-1.10066

Image credits goes to respective sources.