Google has launched a new ‘tome’ which could help us better understand the human body.
The company is using its own ‘dynamical systems biology’ to create a computer model of the human nervous system.
The system will be used to create virtual organs for people with disabilities, and for training doctors to better understand how they might treat them.
It’s the first time the company has used a computer-generated body model in its research.
It could lead to new ways of studying human physiology, says the company.
‘It’s a very different approach to the traditional way of doing research,’ said Dr John MacGregor, director of the Centre for Brain Sciences at the University of Queensland.
‘What’s different about it is that it’s not about having a computer simulation of the nervous system, it’s about understanding how a human nervous activity works.’
A simulation of a brain, which is part of the body.
Photo: Paul Rovere Dr MacGregors team has worked with a team of Australian researchers to create the computer model.
The model will be tested for more than a decade before being used for clinical trials.
The computer simulation will be made up of about 50,000 biological cells, called ‘neurons’.
The neurons in the simulation will represent each individual human cell, and they will be represented in a virtual environment.
It will then simulate the nervous activity of the individual cell by using a computer program called NeuroDynamics.
To make the simulations realistic, the researchers have used a special kind of computer software called ‘hyper-parameter’ that allows them to simulate hundreds of millions of simulated neurons in real time.
Dr Macgregors team is working on a computer version of a human brain.
He said the goal was to make the computer simulation as accurate as possible.
Dr John McGregor said it was important to start by understanding how the nervous systems work, and to use that understanding to help us make better therapies.
‘The goal is to make sure we’re using the best techniques possible so that we can better understand this system so that when we make treatments, we don’t have to rely on a different model,’ he said.
‘We can actually use this simulation to help understand the system and how it works, which in turn is very important.’
The model uses a model of an average person’s nervous system based on their anatomy.
It then shows how neurons in different parts of the brain are connected to each other.
‘This is the neural code that’s actually in your brain,’ Dr MacGrims team said.’
It’s this really complicated way of describing how these neurons are wired together, how they communicate with each other, and how the connections between neurons are organized.’
What we want to do is get that out of the way and start understanding how your nervous system works.’
Dr MacAndrews team is trying to find a way to make it easier to understand how cells behave, so that doctors can use it to train doctors.
‘That’s what’s exciting about this, is that this is a really basic understanding of how the brain works, but what the potential for the future is is that we might be able to get the ability to use this knowledge to train people to do things like help them with their disabilities,’ he told AAP.
Dr McGregors said the team wanted to learn more about how the human brain works so that they could make treatments for more complex diseases.
‘There are a lot of really exciting things in terms of the neurosciences that we are interested in, but this is one of the more fundamental things we are trying to understand about how we work with our nervous system and why we’re so good at what we do,’ he explained.
‘If we can understand how that system works, that we have this understanding of what’s going on inside our bodies, we can make interventions that may make a difference to our disease or our lives, rather than relying on what’s on paper.’
I’m really excited about that, because it means that the field of neuromodulation is moving forward and we’re beginning to have the tools to do something really, really important for the people with neurological conditions.’
We’re very much in the early stages of this, so it’s exciting, but we’re still a long way off.’
The technology that we’re building is so complex that we don´t know how it will play out, but the idea is to try to figure out how to understand that so that it becomes a viable therapy for people.’
The team is now working on other projects to create models of human anatomy.
