Spaun: largest functioning model of the human brain

This is Spaun, short for Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network, this is the largest functioning model of the human brain, made in University of Waterloo, Canada. This system that is powered by 2.5 million simulated neurons, and each neuron is its own entity unto itself.
From sciencemag:


ABSTRACT

"A central challenge for cognitive and systems neuroscience is to relate the incredibly complex behavior of animals to the equally complex activity of their brains. Recently described, large-scale neural models have not bridged this gap between neural activity and biological function. In this work, we present a 2.5-million-neuron model of the brain (called “Spaun”) that bridges this gap by exhibiting many different behaviors. The model is presented only with visual image sequences, and it draws all of its responses with a physically modeled arm. Although simplified, the model captures many aspects of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and psychological behavior, which we demonstrate via eight diverse tasks."

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