Recent years have seen both impressive advances in computational technologies and neuroscience and increasing prevalence of mental disorders. These forces sparked the launch of brain science initiatives worldwide. In the past decade, a “brain race” between Europe, the U.S., Israel, Japan and China has taken off with the goal of understanding human brain function.
One of the earliest brain initiatives was the 10-year, 1 billion-euro (US$1.33 billion in 2013) Human Brain Project, which launched in 2013 as a flagship science initiative of the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies program. The project initially sought to simulate the entire human brain in a supercomputer within a decade, continuing the work its founder, neuroscientist Henry Markram, started with his 2005 Blue Brain Project. Not only did it seek to digitize the brain, but research and laboratory work were also designed to be completely digital, with researchers distributed across Europe.
