Simulated Brain Model Made to See for the First Time

[Translate to Englisch:] By Birgit Baustädter - Researchers at TU Graz have for the first time reproduced the function of vision on a detailed model of the mouse brain. Until now, brain structures could be modelled, but it was not possible to perform specific functions. "The ground-breaking thing about our latest model is that for the first time we can make our brain simulation perform specific functions - in our case, vision," explains TU Graz neuroinformatician Wolfgang Maass, who together with his post-docs Guozhang Chen and Franz Scherr has just published the scientific paper "A data-based large-scale model for primary visual cortex enables brain-like robust and versatile visual processing". As a result of their work, the researchers now expect a new scientific method to be used in future research. Central function in artificial neural networks. The researchers chose the visual function as a research subject because it is one of the central functions of artificial intelligence - for example, in autonomous driving or image processing, the algorithms have to interpret the data about their environment collected by sensors and learn from them. The work of the TU Graz team builds on decades of studies by the renowned Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, which has dedicated itself scientifically to decoding the visual cortex of mice, among other things.