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Reverse Engineering the Brain

A Brief Summary

  • Re engineering the brain simply put is just learning more about the brain and how we can use the technology.
  • Artificial brains today have been designed without much attention to real ones.
  • If successfully re-engineered the blind could see, and the crippled walk.

What developments have occurred to address this issue in the past 5 years?

  • Engineers have made progress in developing artificial retinas
  • Engineers have started to design computer chips that mimic the brains communication skills
  • Research is currently in progress on creating systems to control artificial limbs

Austin Lammers

Ryan Bross

Austin Bostic

Why is this issue in the Grand Challenges

  • What makes it difficult to solve?
  • The human brain is the most complex phenomena in the known universe
  • This is because the brains contains trillions of synapses, billions of neurons, millions of proteins, and thousands of genes
  • Every animal has a brain, but the human brain is unique in that it performs an incredible number of tasks including:
  • controls body temperature,blood pressure,heart rate, and breathing
  • Accepts and analyzes the data received from the senses(sight,hearing,smell,taste,& touch
  • Controls motor skills when walking,walking,standing, or sitting
  • It lets you think,dream,and experience emotions

How would the chosen engineering discipline of each member of your team play a key

role in addressing the challenge?

  • Chemical Engineering:The brain communicates with itself using chemical signals and these chemical signals are what it uses to control everything else. Each neuron receives information with which it either accepts or denies based on whether the receptor recognizes the chemical signal sent or not, its like a lock and key system-this is how medicine works-stop or go.

Predict what advances you think will be made in the next 10 years.

Describe your issue and what it means?

Electrical Engineering: The technology that will be need to perform the tasks ordered by the operator will need to be properly programed for certain tasks. If something were to go wrong with the programing then the machine would not be working properly, ruining whatever the operator was working on.

  • Dharmendra Modha, director of cognitive computing at IBM,predicted that by 2018 computers will be able to simulate the workings of the human brain. She also said that although the brain is still not understood very well,there is enough quantitative data from previous experiments to put the pieces together
  • Neurological disorders may someday be circumvented by technological innovations that allow wiring of new materials into our bodies to do the jobs of lost or damaged nerve cells
  • Implanted electronic devices could help victims of dementia to remember, blind people to see, and crippled people to walk.

Mechanical Engineering

How it relates:

  • During surgery robots are often used, these robots would be designed and built to think without the surgeon controlling every action

Reverse engineering the brain is mapping the brain by dissecting in extremely small layers then photographing each section. Doing this helps us understand how the brain works. If we are able to understand how the brain works, we will be one step closer to artificial intelligence. Also, it will give us an in depth look at where our thoughts and emotions are processed.

QUESTIONS???

Why is this issue important to the health and well-being of the human race?

What is causing the issue?

  • The use of animals and humans testing drugs could be no more.

Why is it an issue that engineers should focus on?

  • Engineers want to use a computer simulation to test and design drugs
  • The possible improvement of the lives of everyone is truly remarkable and is what motivates this research and has caused this "issue"

Because if we understand how the brain works, we will better understand; how it makes decisions, how and why it functions the way it does, find patterns to help predict the future thoughts or actions of an individual, and it would improve the ways for testing potential biotechnology.

Is this a commonly known issue or something more obscure?

Because according to Ray Kurzweil, author of How to Create a Mind, says that like trees and their branches every humans brain is different. We can use this to put his theory to the test, that just like trees and their branches it is possible to find patterns in our brains and we’ll be able to predict the paths our impulses will take.

  • The brain itself is a commonly known object,how it functions and performs its daily tasks is a different story
  • Everyone has a brain and everyone's brain is different, this is why it is so difficult for even the smartest brains on the planet to understand how it works
  • The basics of the brain are understood as in how the neurons work with each other and other functions,but being able to produce a likeness to the brain with equivalent computing power and other functions have yet to be made a reality
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