An ambitious project in Switzerland was scoffed at - but researchers have just succeeded in simulating a rat's brain in silicon

In a laboratory in Switzerland, a group of neuroscientists is developing a mammalian brain - in silicon. The researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in collaboration with IBM, have just completed the first phase of an ambitious project to reproduce a fully functioning brain on a supercomputer. By strange coincidence, their lab happens to lie on the same shores of Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley dreamt up her creation, Dr Frankenstein.

Some of Markram's peers said there simply wasn't enough data available to simulate a human brain. "There is no neuroscientist on the planet that has the authority to say we don't understand enough," says Markram. "We all know a tiny slice. Nobody even knows how much we know."