WBA Session at BICA2017

WBAI participated to the BICA 2017 conference 2017, held in Moscow from August third to fifth as a co-organizer.

On August fourth, WBAI held a Round-table Discussion for Research Collaboration with the Whole Brain Architecture. The following is a summary of the discussion.

Discussions of the approaches and objectives of WBAI
1. Updates and changes since the BICA 2015 conference
  Connectomic architecture, simulation environments, and sample codes had been created (to be available on the website).
2. Motivations of WBAI
  The goal of the initiative is to create a human-level intelligence using the brain as a reference. The initiative is much more a technological enterprise based on scientific findings than a scientific enterprise.
3. Why WBAI is using the mouse brain as a reference
  Although some might be skeptical about the benefits of using the mouse brain to reproduce human-level intelligence, others feel a potential in the current WBA approach. The mouse and human brains are structurally similar so that the experiments of the mouse brain can yield clues and new findings.
4. Accomplishments of this year and the future prospects regarding WBAI’s research with regard to the whole (mouse) brain
  WBAI concentrated on the hippocampus this year. From next year onwards, the research will focus more on developmental issues.
Discussions of community building
1. The creation of a repository where people can share information of research papers that they find on the internet
  This way, useful info can be made available to all the people in the community.
2. The creation of MOOCs (massive open online courses)
  They can create dynamic interaction among people and could be a good way to create a community.
3. The creation of map of progress
  It is very important for people to feel that it’s worth the value to collaborate on a project that is running and it is not something that is just in someone’s mind. Updates on researches and output are crucial.