We're being overrun with Big Data and that has created a need to increase computing and networking power to make it possible to manage the vast amount of information available.

Toward that goal, a new generation of Information and communications technology (ICT) systems has been inspired by the operating principles of the brain.

Stemming from the premise that the brain is an ideal model for information processing, in recent years there have been multiple attempts at bio-inspired systems. Some examples are neuronal networks for learning systems or ant algorithms used to trace optimal paths in communication networks.

Neuroscientists are trying to create full-scale functional models of the brain, yet nobody has a complete picture of how the brain works, much less at the level of higher cognition—how we perceive, how we remember or how we act. Recent advances in data acquisition techniques about the brain’s anatomic-functional organization and cognitive processes (for both humans and animals) have allowed the scientific community to start analyzing the brain’s structure and its cognitive and transmission processes.

This offers a unique opportunity for the design of novel ICT systems inspired by the brain’s structure, as well as by its cognitive and adaptive processes. Recently, some of the main companies in the ICT sector such as IBM, Qualcomm and Intel have launched projects for the design of brain-inspired ICT systems.

For that reason, IMDEA Networks has launched a research project called BRAin inspired Data Engineering (BRADE-CM). The Spanish project is using an interdisciplinary team with a multi-tiered research approach spanning neuroscience, the development of imaging instrumentation, the modeling of complex systems and networks, and the design of information processing ICT systems.