Asimov Press Building Brains on a Computer
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Jan 26, 2026 A roadmap for building human-scale brain emulations, covering breakthroughs that shifted feasibility like expansion microscopy and protein barcodes. Discussion of core needs: recording neural activity, reconstructing wiring, and digitally modeling neurons. Practical timelines, cost estimates, and scaling bottlenecks such as proofreading, compute, and data collection are explored.
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From Skeptic To Believer
- The author began skeptical about emulation after a 2023 Wellcome Trust report on mouse connectome costs.
- After researching a year, he updated his view based on new methods and tooling.
Human Brain Emulation Is Now Plausible
- Recent advances make human-scale brain emulation plausible within decades rather than centuries.
- Breakthroughs in expansion microscopy, protein barcodes, and AI tracing are the key enablers.
Emulations Focus On Biological Realism
- Brain emulations aim to recreate biological architecture, not just behavior like LLMs do.
- That realism could let us run experiments and probe consciousness and disease mechanisms digitally.