How to build a brain

Chris Eliasmith’s team at the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience has built Spaun, the world’s largest simulation of a functioning brain.  Spaun is able to shift between diverse tasks — from copying human handwriting to finding hidden patterns in a list of numbers. Understanding the intricate connections between 2.5 million simulated neurons will lead to better understanding of how changes in the brain affect changes to behaviour.