We’re hearing that the announcement will come as early as next month and it is being proposed as a ten-year project to learn everything we possibly can about the human brain. The project will cost billions of dollars, to be sure, but it should yield some fascinating discoveries that can be applied to the understanding and treatment of conditions like Alzheimer’s, autism and schizophrenia. It’ll also help to create all kinds of jobs and, hopefully, result in some growth in the market too. It’s a win-win-win if it turns out anything like the human genome project. That cost $3.8 billion dollars and it “returned its investment over 100-fold.” And let’s not forget about all the invaluable research.

Combined with ongoing research like what we’ve seen with superpowered Terminator-vision lab rats, there are literally no limits to what this 10-year project may be able to yield. The human brain is remarkably complex, so it’s pretty safe to say that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The project involves not only scientists and government agencies like DARPA, but they are also “planning meetings” with companies like Google, Qualcomm and Microsoft. Perhaps the next-gen Google Glass could be a neural implant?

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Researchers in Germany have found that the brain discards information one bit per active neuron per second. It looks like the old adage “in one ear and out the other” has some solid science behind it.

The brain codes information in the form of electrical pulses, or spikes. Each one of the brain’s 100 billion neurons act as receivers and transmitters. When a spike enters a neuron, an electrical discharge, or action potential, forms on the neuron’s cell membrane. The neuron will give an electrical input to its neighbour only if the potential exceeds a certain value. Therefore, an activity pattern is quickly lost or “forgotten” through tiny changes. This means the signal transmission in the brain is extremely chaotic, as much depends on the performance on individual neurons.

The findings indicate that the brain’s main switching centre, the cerebral cortex, is specifically tailored to process brief snapshots of the outside world. Whether those brief snapshots get retained is a completely different story altogether… what were we talking about again?

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