Revista de informática y biología de sistemas

Back to Basics: Limitations of Research Influencing the Human Brain Project

Abstract

Ewing GW

In an effort to unravel the workings of the human brain the European Commission established the Human Brain Project (2013) however it has been subject to intense rescrutiny, criticism and political infighting. Accordingly the aim of this article is to provide a critical review of whether, at least from the technical perspective, such criticisms are justified. The author is in the privileged position of being able to do so because he heads a company which is in the unique position of commercialising a technology, developed by its Technical Director Dr. Igor Grakov (launched in its first commercial version in 1999), which is based upon a precise, sophisticated, and detailed mathematical model of the autonomic nervous system i.e. that cognitive input can be used as the data sets for a neural simulation technique and/or mathematical model which links brain function to the regulated function of the body’s physiological and/or functional systems, the organs which are essential components of these systems, and of the pathological changes to cellular and molecular biology which are the consequence of systemic dysfunction. In other words the Strannik technology developed by Dr. Grakov meets several of the key aims and objectives of the Human Brain Project. This article highlights (i) fundamental limitations of current diagnostic methods which will severely constrain the ability of researchers to reach a successful conclusion; (ii) fundamental limitations of medical research which ignore basic principles of chemistry and widely recognised (but unfashionable) phenomena; (iii) the assumption that there is a healthy and/or ‘unhealthy’ brain although clearly the health of the brain is influenced by stress, nutritional deficits and emergent pathologies; (iv) it questions the need for ‘big data’ rather than investment in the basic research to identify the fundamental scientific principles; and (v) it is critical of the way in which contemporary biomedical research overlooks the complex and wholistic way in which the body functions.