{"id":333570,"date":"2025-12-06T12:29:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T12:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/333570\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T12:29:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T12:29:30","slug":"supercomputer-creates-one-of-the-most-realistic-virtual-brains-ever-seen-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/333570\/","title":{"rendered":"Supercomputer Creates One of The Most Realistic Virtual Brains Ever Seen : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Getting a better understanding of how the brain works<\/a> is tricky, as living brains aren’t easily prodded and analyzed. Scientists now have a new simulation of a mouse’s brain to refer to \u2013 one of the most comprehensive that’s ever been put together.<\/p>\n

The creation was led by a team from the Allen Institute in the US and the University of Electro-Communications in Japan, and it may allow diseases such as Alzheimer’s<\/a> to be modeled and studied in greater detail.<\/p>\n

The simulation models an entire mouse cortex<\/a>. While this isn’t nearly as large or as intricate as a human brain, which contains billions of neurons<\/a>, there are similarities<\/a> between human and rodent brains \u2013 so this could be a useful study tool.<\/p>\n

Related: Boosting One Protein Reawakens Aging Brain Cells in Mice, Study Shows<\/a><\/p>\n

The numbers are impressive: the virtual brain contains 9 million neurons, as well as 26 billion synapses (neuron connectors<\/a>). There are 86 interconnected regions in the brain simulation, and it can process quadrillions of calculations every second.<\/p>\n

To put that in perspective, the real and full mouse brain contains<\/a> roughly 70 million neurons in a space about the size of an almond.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“This shows the door is open,” says<\/a> computational neuroscientist Anton Arkhipov, from the Allen Institute. “We can run these kinds of brain simulations effectively with enough computing power.”<\/p>\n

“It’s a technical milestone giving us confidence that much larger models are not only possible, but achievable with precision and scale.”<\/p>\n

\"BrainThe simulation enables researchers to track the activity of individual neurons. (Kuriyama et al., 2025).<\/p>\n

The complexity of the simulation means that researchers can watch as models of cognition, consciousness<\/a>, and disease spread through the brain<\/a>. It’s a three-dimensional, moving map that shows individual neurons firing and connecting.<\/p>\n

Some of the ways this could be used, according to the researchers, are to test hypotheses on how seizures spread in the brain, or how brain waves contribute to focus<\/a> \u2013 without any need for repeated, invasive, physical brain scans.<\/p>\n

The necessary computing power was provided by the Fugaku supercomputer<\/a> in Japan, which built upon existing cell databases and charts to form the model. The team also developed new software to more efficiently process brain activity and keep unnecessary calculations down to a minimum.<\/p>\n

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“Fugaku is used for research in a wide range of computational science fields, such as astronomy, meteorology, and drug discovery, contributing to the resolution of many societal problems,” says<\/a> computer scientist Tadashi Yamazaki, from the University of Electro-Communications.<\/p>\n

“On this occasion, we utilized Fugaku for a neural circuit simulation.”<\/p>\n

Our brains are, of course, essential to good physical and mental health, and healthy old age \u2013 and studies of virtual brain maps<\/a> and mini-brain structures<\/a> are going to be crucial in learning more about how this organ works, and how it can break down.<\/p>\n

The team has already been busy putting their new model to use, making discoveries about brain wave synchronization<\/a> and the way the two hemispheres of the mouse brain interact with each other.<\/p>\n

It’s a massively impressive feat of computing and biological modeling, but the researchers have even grander plans, and one day want to build a full-sized model of a human brain inside a virtual computing space.<\/p>\n

“Our long-term goal is to build whole-brain models, eventually even human models, using all the biological details our Institute is uncovering,” says<\/a> Arkhipov. “We’re now moving from modeling single brain areas to simulating the entire brain of the mouse.”<\/p>\n

The research has been presented at the SC25 supercomputing conference<\/a>, and is available online<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getting a better understanding of how the brain works is tricky, as living brains aren’t easily prodded and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97,1352],"class_list":["post-333570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-msft-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}