The Human Brain Project SP6: Brain Simulation Platform

The Human Brain Project's sub-project six: Brain Simulation Project will build the platform that will make it possible to reconstruct and simulate models at different levels of description allowing experimentalists and theoreticians to choose the level of detail most appropriate to the questions they are asking and to the data and computing power available.

The platform will be designed to support continuous integration of biological data and implementation of biological principles, ensuring that the models become steadily more accurate and detailed as the project proceeds. Tools developed for the platform will allow researchers to collaboratively design and run in silico experiments to further validate the models and perform experiments and manipulations impossible in the lab.


The project will use these tools to reconstruct and validate first-draft models of different levels of brain organisation, in mice and in humans. The ultimate goal is to develop multi-scale (simple to complex), multi-level (genes to whole brain) models of the mouse and human brains, in which different brain areas are modelled at levels of detail appropriate to the state of current knowledge and data, the computational power available for simulation and the needs of researchers.