Building a real brain box

Scientists at the University of Manchester are aiming to build a computer which mimics how nerve cells in the brain interact in a bid to engineer more fault tolerant electronics.

The computer will be the first of its kind and will be used to try and understand how, for example, the brain encodes the details of complex visual scenes.

Professor Steve Furber, of The School of Computer Science, will lead the £1 million project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The work will be carried out in collaboration with the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, using technology supplied by industrial partners ARM and Silistix.

Professor Furber said, "Our brains keep working despite frequent failures of their component neurons, and this 'fault-tolerant' characteristic is of great interest to engineers who wish to make computers more reliable.