Invited Lecture: Prof. T. R. Gopalakrishnan Nair

The Brain and its properties have challenged the human being for a long period of time. The complexities of architecture and expressionism of Brain as an organ along with its influence on the manifestation of life are some of the domains fairly unexplored. 

A deeper investigation of Brain as a system having various capabilities in various mammals including humans will remain to be one of the prime scientific pursuit  in 21^st Century. The Brain is composed of eighty-six billion Neurons and associated Glial cells supporting its performances. The geometrical spread of neurons range from hypothalamus to neo-cortical complexes. Most neurons of Brain have an extensive layout and an intertwined wiring with large scale couplings of Synaptic and Dendritic extensions of neural main body. The human Brain is autonomously partitioned functionally into 52 Brodmann  area displaying capabilities in different domains pertaining to sensory perception, physical motor capabilities and the power of cognition augmented with capability to escalate into stages of consciousness. A realization of this comprehensive phenomenon and functionalism into Silicon in one shot is almost impossible whereas achieving incremental realism of selected capabilities with appropriate models of neuron and neuronal clusters are proximal targets. For half a century,  silicon has supported humanity extensively in augmenting intellectual power through an ever expanding digital logic pattern and reaching a summit of integration of billions of components,  only restricted by quantum mechanical resolution feasible for component realization. Hence transforming Silicon wafers in to Brain heavily depends on the theoretical success of identifying structural properties of the Brain to get a deeper insight in to the Connectome and Chemical Signal Processing.  It needs to translate the secrets of clustered neuron dynamics along with the meanings of Synaptic and Dendritic transport signals  while incorporating certain axonal properties, probably representing practical Quantum phenomenon. Hence, in this lecture,  various critical issues  of the above cited features of Brain domains are exposed which may contrive and abet in forming Brain mimics in Silicon in near future.