Contenu principal
Theory
One way of looking at the brain is to work from the bottom up, beginning with its most basic components – molecules, synapses, neurons and tiny circuits connecting neurons together. The alternative approach is to look at the brain from the top down, developing theories of the kind of machinery necessary to produce the behavior we observe when we study humans and animals. A key goal of the Human Brain Project is to bring these two approaches together, establishing the crucial theoretical link between the detailed properties of neurons and neural circuitry and the higher level computations at work in cognition and behavior. An equally important practical goal is to find out how much biological detail is necessary to model specific capabilities, making it possible to design simplified models that can be used as the basis for practical technologies.