Supercomputer simulates how cat’s brain works.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,

Intricately woven in the depths of the earth. (Psalm 139:14)

I read the extraordinary story about trying to understand how a cat’s brain works in the Minneapolis Star Tribune of November 18, 2009. But let the article speak for itself:

“A computer with the power of a human brain is not yet near. But this week, researchers from IBM Corp. reported that they have simulated a cat’s cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, using a massive supercomputer. The computer has 147,456 processors (most modern PCs have just one or two processors) and 144 terabytes of main memory— 100,000 times as much as your computer has...

"The simulation, which runs 100 times slower than an actual cat’s brain, is more about watching how thoughts are formed in the brain and how the roughly 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses in a cat’s brain work together.”

And that’s what got to me—those 1 billion neurons and the 10 trillion synapses and the 147,456 processors that still didn’t do justice to our feline’s brain. And then look at us human beings!

Jim Olds, a neuroscientist at George Mason University, in the same article “cautioned that simulating the human brain is ‘such a complex problem that we may not be able to get to an answer, even with supercomputing.’"

We are indeed, “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. For December, our contributor is Father Seamus Walsh of St. John’s Catholic Church in Grand Marais and the Holy Rosary Catholic Church of Grand Portage.