Systematic Overhaul Recommended for Human Brain Project

March 24, 2015 | An independent committee reviewing the goals and practices of Europe's Human Brain Project (HBP) has substantially sided with critics of the effort, proposing major changes to the HBP's governance and to its central mission of creating a computer simulation of the human brain. Criticisms of the HBP bubbled over into the public consciousness last summer, when hundreds of neuroscientists pledged not to accept funding from the Project in an open letter. The new review faults the centralization of power in a few leading scientists, notably Henry Markram of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, and calls on the HBP's directors to break down their proposed simulation into smaller, more well-defined IT problems that can model specific elements of brain anatomy and function. Nature News