--- title: "Front Matter" document_id: sobe-2025-main-ai document_type: report_section parent_document: ../report.md section_id: main-section-01-front-matter section_order: 1 section_count: 17 language: en license: CC-BY-4.0 --- # Front Matter > Selective-retrieval section 1 of 17 from the [complete AI-readable report](../report.md). Content is copied without editorial summarization; relative asset, data, and code paths are rebased for this directory. - **Parent document:** [`report.md`](../report.md) - **Section ID:** `main-section-01-front-matter` - **Order:** 1 of 17 - **Words:** 1083 - **Previous:** None - **Next:** [Preface](02-preface.md) > **Reader contract.** This edition is optimized for retrieval, citation, and programmatic analysis. Most prose was recovered from the final-circulation Google Docs export; the Main Authors block and Executive Summary come from the published PDF and are explicitly tagged. The published 182-page PDF remains authoritative. Editorial comments and layout-only elements were removed. Each numbered figure has a stable ID, explicit provenance, and inline data when locally available. Final-PDF rasters are primary where a material export/PDF difference was identified; otherwise final-circulation export assets are retained. Current repository data is labeled as context whenever an exact publication snapshot is unavailable. ## Document metadata - **Type:** Report, AI-readable edition - **Edition:** 1.0 - **Authors:** Niccolo Zanichelli; Maximilian Schons; Isaak Freeman; Philip K. Shiu; Anton Arkhipov - **Publication authority:** [Published 182-page report](../../assets/State-of-Brain-Emulation-Report-2025.pdf) - **DOI:** - **License:** CC BY 4.0 - **Recommended citation:** Zanichelli, N., Schons, M., Freeman, I., Shiu, P. K., & Arkhipov, A. (2025). *State of Brain Emulation Report 2025*. ## Machine navigation - [Edition manifest](../manifest.json) - [Section index for selective retrieval](../report-sections/index.md) - [At a Glance AI edition](../at-a-glance.md) - [Article: Building Brains on a Computer](../asimov.md) - [Published PDF](../../assets/State-of-Brain-Emulation-Report-2025.pdf) - [Data repository](../../data-repository.html) - DOI: ## Acknowledgements We could not have written this report without the countless hours that experts worldwide gave us. We are deeply grateful for their pointers, repeated answers to our questions, and work in the field. Adam Glaser, Adam Marblestone, Anders Sandberg, Andrew Payne, Andy McKenzie, Anshul Kashyap, Camille Mitchell, Christian Larsen, Claire Wang, Connor Flexman, Daniel Leible, Davi Bock, Davy Deng, Ed Boyden, Florian Engert, Glenn Clayton, James Lin, Jianfeng Feng, Jordan Matelsky, Ken Hayworth, Kevin Esvelt, Konrad Kording, Lei Ma, Logan Thrasher Collins, Michael Andregg, Michael Skuhersky, Michał Januszewski, Nicolas Patzlaff, Niko McCarty, Oliver Evans, Ons M’Saad, Patrick Mineault, Quilee Simeon, Richie Kohman, Srinivas Turaga, Tomaso Poggio, Viren Jain, Yangning Lu, Zeguan Wang The State of Brain Emulation 2025 Report was funded by MxSchons GmbH acted as the project host, coordinating the work and administering all funds and contracts. ## Main Authors - **Niccolo Zanichelli — Corresponding author, Independent.** Italian AI researcher and Member of Technical Staff at the Amaranth Foundation, focusing on NeuroAI for AI safety; co-founder of OpenBioML; 2024 Foresight Institute Fellow; co-author of the “NeuroAI for AI Safety” roadmap. - **Maximilian Schons — Project lead, MxSchons GmbH.** Physician and research consultant focused on responsible innovation at the intersection of biotechnology and AI; formerly held senior positions in German medical research consortia and served as Chief Medical Officer for life-science startups. More at . - **Isaak Freeman — MIT Synthetic Neurobiology Group.** Austrian-born MS/PhD student in Ed Boyden’s group, researching engineering sleep and brain simulations; completed Applied Mathematics at UC Berkeley; founded a nonprofit and organized the Future Forum. - **Anton Arkhipov — Allen Institute.** Investigator building biophysically detailed brain-circuit models; led work modeling nearly 10 million neurons and 26 billion synapses across mouse cortex; developed the Brain Modeling ToolKit (BMTK). - **Philip K. Shiu — Eon Systems.** Head of Engineering working on brain emulation; created a Drosophila connectome-based simulation at UC Berkeley and studied double-stranded RNA movement in *C. elegans* at Harvard. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## Contents - [Acknowledgements](../report.md#acknowledgements) - [Main authors](../report.md#main-authors) - [Lists of figures and tables](../report.md#list-of-figures) - [Preface](../report.md#preface) - [Executive materials](../report.md#executive-materials) - [Foundations](../report.md#introduction) - [State across organisms](../report.md#part-2-state-of-brain-emulation-across-organisms) - [Methods for brain emulation](../report.md#methods-for-brain-emulation) - [Glossary](../report.md#glossary) - [Appendix and author contributions](../report.md#part-3-appendix) - [References](../report.md#part-4-references) ## List of Figures | | | | |----|----|----| | | Title | Page | | Figure 1 | Heatmap plot of significant brain recording publications across different organisms | 14 | | Figure 2 | Estimated instantaneous information rate of neural recordings over time | 15 | | Figure 3 | Cost per quality-controlled reconstructed Neuron (inflation adjusted to 2025) | 19 | | Figure 4 | Heatmap plot of computational brain models across different organisms | 21 | | Figure 5 | Computational demands across organisms | 22 | | Figure 6 | Overview of steps required for brain emulation | 26 | | Figure 7 | Overview of the optical neural recording landscape in C. elegans | 36 | | Figure 8 | Overview of OpenWorm Simulation stack (Sarma et al, 2018) | 41 | | Figure 9 | OpenWorm simulation | 42 | | Figure 10 | BAAIWorm moving towards simulated chemicals (Zhao et al, 2024) | 45 | | Figure 11 | BAAIWorm: Data collection, component construction, and model optimization (Zhao et al, 2024) | 46 | | Figure 12 | Overview of the optical neural recording landscape in Larval Zebrafish | 53 | | Figure 13 | Overview of the optical neural recording landscape in Drosophila | 65 | | Figure 14 | Overview of the optical neural recording landscape in Mouse | 81 | | Figure 15 | Overview of the physiology and simulation workflow (Isbister et al., 2024) | 89 | | Figure 16 | Predictive accuracy of foundation models (Wang et al., 2023) | 91 | | Figure 17 | Simplified comparison of major neural recording modalities across key dimensions | 107 | | Figure 18 | Availability of neural data to train a large-scale model (Mineault et al, 2024) | 124 | | Figure 19 | Comparison of a map of the globe and connectomics (Schlegel et al, 2024) | 127 | | Figure 20 | The Tyranny of Scale: Tracing accuracy deterioration (Brain Connects Workshop Series, 2023) | 129 | | Figure 21 | Replication of Wellcome Trust Figure on EM Datasets | 131 | | Figure 22 | Connectomics Pipeline overview (Mineault et al, 2024) | 131 | | Figure 23 | Expansion Microscopy Process | 132 | | Figure 24 | pan-ExM-t workflow for mouse brain tissue sections (M’Saad et al, 2022) | 133 | | Figure 25 | Comparison of raw image data in serial section transmission electron microscopy (top) and expansion confocal light microscopy (Collins et al, 2024) | 134 | | Figure 26 | Bandwidth Requirements by Resolution and Channel Count | 140 | | Figure 27 | Estimated Compute Requirements for Time-Based Brain Emulation | 157 | | Figure 28 | Divergent Growth Rates of Compute, Memory, and Interconnect Performance | 158 | | Figure 29 | Estimated Memory Requirements for Brain Emulation | 159 | | Figure 30 | Estimated Compute Requirements for Event-Driven Brain Emulation | 160 | Video 1 - C. elegans behavior Video 2 - Larval Zebrafish Behavior Video 3 - Fruitfly Behavior Video 4 - Rodent behavior ## List of Tables | | | | |----|----|----| | | Title | Page | | [Table 1](../report.md#table-1) | Physical dimensions and component counts for the five model organisms | 11 | | [Table 2](../report.md#table-2) | Synaptic resolution Electron microscopy connectome reconstructions | 18 | | [Table 3](../report.md#table-3) | Scales for Defining Brain Emulations | 29 | | [Table 4](../report.md#table-4) | Model Organism Overview: C. elegans | 48 | | [Table 5](../report.md#table-5) | Gaps and Opportunities: C. elegans | 49 | | [Table 6](../report.md#table-6) | Model Organism Overview: Larval zebrafish | 60 | | [Table 7](../report.md#table-7) | Gaps and Opportunities: Larval Zebrafish | 61 | | [Table 8](../report.md#table-8) | Model Organism Overview: Drosophila | 76 | | [Table 9](../report.md#table-9) | Gaps and Opportunities: Drosophila | 77 | | [Table 10](../report.md#table-10) | Model Organism Overview: Mouse | 93 | | [Table 11](../report.md#table-11) | Gaps and Opportunities: Mouse | 94 | | [Table 12](../report.md#table-12) | Model Organism Overview: Human | 103 | | [Table 13](../report.md#table-13) | Gaps and Opportunities: Human | 104 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------