A software human mind 'in 10 years' SCIENCE.

AN artificial brain could be built within a decade, it was claimed yesterday.

Henry Makram, director of research group the Blue Brain Project, has already created parts of a fully functioning rat brain and hopes to build a human one in the next 10 years.

He told a conference in Oxford yesterday: "It is not impossible to build a human brain. We can do it in 10 years."

Mr Makram believes his research could bring hope for the two billion people globally who suffer from brain diseases.

The Blue Brain Project, launched in 2005, aims to engineer a brain from laboratory data, with a software model of "tens of thousands of neurons" reconstructing the brain's circuitry and processes.