Green Brain: Computational Modelling of the Honeybee Brain

Building intelligent machines that can perform complex cognitive tasks as well as or better than the human brain is a long-standing challenge of modern science. This quest has seen one of its highlights when IBM's Deep Blue chess computer beat the world champion Kasparov in 1997. Despite its superior performance in chess, this system was however in no way similar to or as powerful and versatile as a brain. More recently the Blue Brain initiative, also partially funded by IBM, set out to build a real-scale model of a cortical column of the human brain, moving us closer to the goal of eventually building an artificial brain that works like its biological counterpart.

In the Green Brain project we propose to build such an artificial brain, but of the smaller brain of the honeybee. We will work with the world-leading research group of Prof. Martin Giurfa in Toulouse, who are experts in all aspects of bee brain anatomy, physiology and bee cognition and behavior. Bees have a surprisingly large cognitive capacity including transfer of learned associations across sensory modalities, e.g. from smells to colors, and learning abstract concepts such as the categories of "the same" and "different". At the same time their brains are much smaller, structured and (proportionally) much better researched than the complex human brain. It is also much easier to perform invasive manipulations to dissect how different parts of the bee brain function.

In the Green Brain project we will build detailed computer models of the two most important sensory systems of the bee, the senses of smell (olfactory system) and of sight (visual system). In doing so, we will incorporate existing data, models and principles and identify further how they give rise to the observed impressive cognitive abilities. We will then combine the sensory systems with learning models and models of sensory integration in close collaboration with the experts in the Giurfa lab to eventually build a full-scale model of the bee brain. This model will be implemented on state-of-the-art massively parallel graphical processing unit (GPU) based super-computers, a new technology spearheaded by NVIDIA Corporation who is supporting this project with GPU hardware donations. Using GPU computing will allow us to simulate our Green Brain model in real time, which will be essential for the final phase of the project when we will put the Green Brain to work as the brain of an autonomous flying robot. This is an important further advance over current work on brain models because it is becoming more and more clear that an essential aspect of brain function is that the brain is not acting in isolation but in constant interaction with the body and the environment. This concept of "embodiment" and its consequences for cognition are important insights of modern cognitive science and will become equally important for modern neuroscience.

The outputs from the Green Brain project will have impacts in several academic areas. In the neurosciences it will advance the field of large scale brain models and our understanding of how information is processed in the sensory systems of bees. We will also contribute new tools for the use of modern GPU technology for artificial brains and employing them in bio-mimetic robotics. For the cognitive sciences we will contribute to the understanding of embodiment in biologically realistic model systems.

Beyond academia, the development of autonomous flying robots may have applications in environmental exploration, search and rescue and artificial pollination. Developing a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying cognition may ultimately translate into greater insights into human cognition and cognitive disorders. Finally, developing a better understanding of the honeybee may prove to be important in its own right as bees are a key pollinator in most ecologies and hence a 'keystone species' and vital for food security.

This project combines technology development with substantial basic research components. The ultimate impact of the technologies developed is relatively easy to predict. The impact predicted from basic research is necessarily much more speculative, however it is easy to demonstrate the economic, ecological and societal importance of the basic research problems being tackled. The potential impact of the project can be summarised as follows:

* supporting the development of autonomous and adaptive flying robots, with potential application in environmental exploration, search and rescue, artificial pollination, etc.
* developing greater understanding of the mechanisms underlying cognition, which may ultimately translate into greater understanding of human cognition.
* developing greater understanding of the honeybee, a key pollinator in most ecologies and hence a 'keystone species' and vital for human food security.

These potential impacts are described in more detail below:

Towards development of autonomous and adaptive flying robots
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This impact is the most immediate to arise from the project. This project will develop sophisticated behaviours for control of flying robots, and demonstrate their embodiment in a testbed flying robot platform. There are obvious and innumerable applications of autonomous, adaptive flying robots. These include exploration in dangerous environments, such as search and rescue. Less obvious applications may include artificial pollination, which might become essential for human food security if current declines in honeybee populations continue. For this reason, the US National Sciences Foundation recently awarded Harvard University and partners one of three 'Expeditions in Computing' awards, worth up to $10m, to fund the Robobees project which is developing flying microrobots. Control of these is a hard problem, and an obvious potential application area for the current project which we shall explore during its development.

Understanding basic mechanisms of cognition
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The basic research undertaken in the project may have longer term economic and societal impacts. The cognitive sophistication of the honeybee brain is often under-appreciated. In fact, honeybees exhibit many of the cognitive abilities of 'higher' organisms such as vertebrates, including humans. Understanding the mechanisms of cognition in the honeybee may ultimately translate into a greater understanding of animal and human cognitive mechanisms. Since understanding human cognitive mechanisms should help with treatment of cognitive disorders, the societal and economic benefits of such research are potentially very large. For example Parkinson's disease alone, which may be caused by malfunction of basic action selection and learning circuits in the human brain, has been estimated to cost the UK economy between £0.45bn and £3.3bn per year.

Ecological, economic and societal significance of the honeybee
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Honeybees are vital pollinators, and thus are 'keystone species' whose absence from an ecosystem can have catastrophic consequences for other species. Human food security in particular is heavily reliant on pollination by honeybees. As has been widely reported, however, honeybee populations have been in sharp decline in Europe and North America. For this reason, the UK government made funding of £10m available in 2009 for investigation into the causes of honeybee decline, with similar funding initiatives in the USA. One example motivation of the NSF funded Robobees project described above is to produce 'artificial pollinators' to take over in the event of a complete collapse in honeybee numbers; the current project could ultimately contribute to such a technological solution. More fundamentally, while progress on identifying the causes of honeybee population decline has been made, further basic research into honeybees, including behavioural and neuroscience research, can only improve our understanding of them.