But how did they make the breakthrough?

In my last post I excerpted a small part of the incredibly inspiring Seed article on the Blue Brain project. As I thought about it, I realized that what is perhaps more important is how this breakthrough was made. Three things jumped out at me: First, the scientists realized that the field of Neuroscience had a lot of data, but no model to make sense of it. As the lead scientist put it:

“You need to look at the history of physics,” he says. “From Copernicus to Einstein, the big breakthroughs always came from conceptual models. They are what integrated all the facts so that they made sense. You can have all the data in the world, but without a model the data will never be enough.”

Second, they constrained their project to the very specific problem of simulating “a neocortical column in a two-week-old rat”. Third, they needed cleaner empirical data to use in their software model, so they figured out a way to use a lab robot to help them redo 30 years of research in 6 months.