Neuroscientists File Open Letter to EC Protesting Human Brain Project

Jul 09, 2014 07:35 AM EDT | Matt Mercuro

Hundreds of neuroscience researchers are protesting Europe's $1.6 billion Human Brain Project, an initiative which will involve attempting to re-create the human brain in supercomputers.

Approximately 379 neuroscientists filed an open letter on July 7 calling on the European Commission to re-examine the science, transparency, and management behind the Human Brain Project.

Signers of the letter include neuroscientists from the Institut Pasteur and the University of Oxford, who have threatened to boycott the Human Brain Project if the European Commission doesn't give in, according to Newsweek.

"We strongly question whether the goals and implementation of the HBP are adequate to form the nucleus of the collaborative effort in Europe that will further our understanding of the brain," the letter reads.

The Human Brain Project is led by neuroscientist Henry Markram at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, who plans on involving over 80 European and international research institutions. 

The project is expected to run over 10 years and is easily one of the world's largest brain-mapping efforts ever.

"If we can rise to it, we can gain profound insights into what makes us human," the Human Brain Project website claims.

The open letter is insisting that the project's focus is too "narrow" and that it risks becoming "highly controversial and divisive within the European neuroscience community and even within the consortium, resulting in ongoing losses of members.

Click here to sign the letter.

The project will release the first phase of its program by 2016, which will allow any scientist to run his or her own simulations.

Markram has dismissed the criticism the project has received so far, comparing it to the doubts a number of people had with the Human Genome Project.

"That was also about large-scale, systematic teams working together, and you also had the individual labs saying, 'Oh my, I am going to be out of business.' It's very similar to that. It's a natural reaction when you move from an old paradigm to a new one," Markram said, according to an interview with MIT Technology Review.

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