Remember how Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain project claimed in summer that an “artificial brain is 10 years away” (see Reverse-engineer the brain to build it)? The same boffin now dismissed last weeks news of IBM simulating a cat’s brain as a “hoax”. Still, the paper on the cat cortex simulation was awarded the ACM Gordon Bell Prize and IBM is one of the Blue Brain project’s technology partner. So, what do you think?(Via theregister.co.uk)

Almost a year ago we blogged that IBM is trying to create electronic circuits that mimic brains. Now the scientists at IBM have announced that they have made indeed succeeded in simulating a cat-sized cerebral cortex and are now moving towards creating a computer system that will simulate and emulate the human brain for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition. In their press release they also claimed that the system rivals the brain’s low power and energy consumption.

Slot Consulting commercializes Brainup, ai-one™ powered business intelligence solutionSemantic system ag announced  today that it signed an exclusive agreement with Slot Consulting that will allow Slot Consulting the rights to develop, use, and market Brainup, a business intelligence solution that is based on semantic system’s ai-one™ technology.

Brainup provides valuable insight into business data. Brainup turns legacy, archived and current data on pc’s, workstations, in the intranet, databases or file systems into a knowledge base.

About Slot Consulting

Slot Consulting (website in german) is consulting firm focusing on business and management consulting.

To view the entire press release please click here: Press Release November 11 2009 – Turn your legacy into active and valuable information

Ever heard of “cyborg astrobiologist”? A team of geoscientists are developing an artificial intelligence system that future Mars explorers could incorporate into their spacesuits to help them recognize signs of life on Mars’ surface. The system uses a form of artificial intelligence called a Hopfield neural network that is programmed to compare incoming data with patterns it has seen before, and identifying those that are different. Using digital eyes incorporated into astronauts’ suits, the AI system would collect data from the environment and analyze it in the Hopfield networks located on the hips of the suits.(via wired.com)

Walter Digglemann’s speech at the University Pforzheim is posted on YouTube. You can download the slides of the presentation here.

Remember the movie “Total Recall”? In this movie Arnold Schwarzenegger buys an imaginary trip to Mars, which then is implanted as “false memory”. This was Science Fiction in 1990. But now, a team of neuroscientists have found a way to embed false, fearful memories in the flies.

The researchers were looking for the cells in the fly brain that are linked to negative associative learning. This learning is how flies (and other animals) link an experience with an undesired outcome. Read how the scientists have implanted false memories into the brain of the flies (via nytimes.com)