“In Silico” – the future is now, or is it? [MOVIE REVIEW]
Computer simulation of nerve cells deep inside a neocortical column in “In Silico.” Photo courtesy of Sandbox Films. When 22 year old Noah Hutton met neuroscientist Henry Markram in 2009, he was dazzled. Markram’s TED talk had set the world on fire when he claimed he was on the verge of simulating a brain with a super computer. He had already started recreating a column of the neo-cortex and from there he would be able to put together all the pieces of the puzzle and produce a working rat brain by using artificial intelligence and a supercomputer. His Swiss lab in Lausanne, the Blue Brain Project, was lavishly sponsored by IBM with additional funding by the Swiss government. He popularized the expression – In silico. Experiments conducted “in vivo” are on living organisms or cells; “in vitro” are run outside the organism; and “in silico” are computer simulated. Markram told Hutton that he would have a working model in ten years’ time and it was then that Hutton knew he had to document this journey, year by year, from 2009 until the target date of 2019. Markram, charming, brilliant, and persuasive, led a group of devoted computer scientists in his quest. Painstakingly modeling a…
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