We live exciting times for Neuroscience, where multi billion initiatives have been launched recently. The Allen Institute (Seattle, US), The Janelia Farm (DC, US), The EU Human Brain Project (Lausanne, Switzerland), and the Obama’s Brain Initiative are just few examples of a paradigm shift in Neuroscience: from isolated labs to large, industrial-scale, big-data consortia.

Among these initiatives, we are witnessing a solid renewed interest in computational approaches for brain research, that is the experimental study of the brain complemented and supported by computers, mathematical models, and numerical simulations of biophysical phenomena.

In this introductory-level talk, I will offer an overview of the current “hype” on large-scale initiatives to simulate the brain, such as the Human Brain Project of which my lab is part of.