Medical Pinky & The Brain: What Does "1/10 Time" Mean?

[raolduke]

I just heard about this last night and I find it interesting -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6600965.stm"
They ran it at 1/10 time? Can someone please explain to me what this means?

 

[Mk]

Great article! Your question it says right in the article actually.

at a speed ten times slower than real life - the equivalent of one second in a real mouse brain.

 

[raolduke]

I am sorry I don't know how to read...


Does this mean that its 1/10 as powerful as a mouses brain?

 

[neurocomp2003]

no it means that it is run 1/10th of what it would normally run in realtime.
REmember in simulations you can run the simulation faster/slower than how it would occur in an observable experiments("realtime")...

faster: meaning you assume a lot more things and take a lot more approximations
slower: you try to be as numerically/spatially accurate as possible.

For example if u were to run the projectile motion of a hockey puck...each time frame u generate could represent "t" nanosecs of the event and if you generated "n" time frames in which each time frame takes "tc" you will have captured "n*t" nanoseconds of realtime in "tc*n*t" nanoseconds of computational time.

The power of the simulated brain as opposed to the real mouse brain will be determined by the size of teh brains and what the simulated brain can do...though you can also incorporate the ratio of teh time it takes for each to process ...but if the simulated brain can fully emulate the mouse brain then one could say it is equally as powerful.

I wonder if that project is part of the BlueBrain project?

 

[raolduke]

Thank you neuro. I believe it is part of the BlueBrain project or very early stages into creating an actual human brain.