The scientific case for brain simulations

TL;DR

This paper advocates for large-scale brain simulations as essential tools for understanding brain function, emphasizing the development of multimodal simulators that integrate various measurement signals for model refinement.

Contribution

It argues for the necessity of multimodal, large-scale brain simulators to bridge neuron and system levels, advancing the methodology of brain modeling.

Findings

Simulations are crucial for bridging neuron and system scales.

Multimodal simulations can improve model validation.

Development of diverse brain simulators is recommended.

Abstract

A key element of the European Union's Human Brain Project (HBP) and other large-scale brain research projects is simulation of large-scale model networks of neurons. Here we argue why such simulations will likely be indispensable for bridging the scales between the neuron and system levels in the brain, and a set of brain simulators based on neuron models at different levels of biological detail should thus be developed. To allow for systematic refinement of candidate network models by comparison with experiments, the simulations should be multimodal in the sense that they should not only predict action potentials, but also electric, magnetic, and optical signals measured at the population and system levels.