Blue Brain Project

The Blue Brain Project was a Swiss brain research initiative that aimed to create a digital reconstruction of the mouse brain. The project was founded in May 2005 by the Brain Mind Institute of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. The project ended in December 2024. Its mission was to use biologically detailed digital reconstructions and simulations of the mammalian brain to identify the fundamental principles of brain structure and function. The project was headed by the founding director Henry Markram—who also launched the European Human Brain Project—and was co-directed by Felix Schürmann, Adriana Salvatore and Sean Hill. Using a Blue Gene supercomputer running Michael Hines's NEURON, the simulation involved a biologically realistic model of neurons and an empirically reconstructed model connectome. There were a number of collaborations, including the Cajal Blue Brain, which is coordinated by the Supercomputing and Visualization Center of Madrid (CeSViMa), and others run by universities and independent laboratories.