Re:Not Bloody Likely (Score 2, Interesting)

I have already answered most of the questions that you have raised above -- please search for my other posts (I am a researcher on the project).

As with regards to your other comments, I am willing to bet that the number of neuroscience publications produced by our team compares favorably to the number of publications of almost any group of a similar size. We know what we are doing. For example, some of us are behind the DOE/DOD project on artificial retina, to be used by blind soldiers coming home from wars. People cannot see with such retinas yet, but they can distinguish light from darkness. So, again, while we are computer geeks, we are also quite respected neuroscientists (read the team roster in the original press release and google).

The key thing, of course, that, in this project, we didn't want to simulate the real physiology (which, I agree with you, we have no hope to do in the foreseeable future). We tried to simulate the functional behavior of the network. The difference is the same as, for example, between simulation locomotion on the levelof contracting muscles and rigid bones vs. simulating gene expression and protein production in every cell in the said muscle.