When normal researchers apply for a grant, they have to be completely convincing about the feasibility of their project. In today's climate of extreme competition, just one unanswered question or any lack of preliminary data can be fatal. Grant committees always seem to want paradigm-shifting research, so applications that follow on from a previous project are very closely examined to see if the results obtained justify renewal.

The Human Brain Project (HPB)

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/discover/the-project/overview

is applying for some 1 billion euros of funding from the European Commission. Its precursor is the Blue Brain project, which had a budget of many millions

http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/

Peers may wish to help apply modern review standards to these projects, as the European Commission generally shows little interest in scientific aspects of applications. A key scientific question is the utility of large-scale explicit simulations of the sort forming the core of the HPB.

Additionally, one could question the wisdom of the arrangement whereby the National research councils must fund a large fraction of the HBP activity. Funding is already very constrained in my nation.

One thing that struck me is that few if any of the Blue Brain project's publications have made use of large scale simulations. Two papers that are featured on the site are the following:

Hill SL1, Wang Y, Riachi I, Schuermann F, Markram H. (2012) Statistical connectivity provides a sufficient foundation for specific functional connectivity in neocortical neural microcircuits. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 109:E2885-94. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1202128109.

https://pubpeer.com/publications/2142495FA2F79394C97057C6E9323F

and

Michael W. Reimann, Costas A. Anastassiou, Rodrigo Perin, Sean L. Hill, Henry Markram, Christof Koch (2013) A Biophysically Detailed Model of Neocortical Local Field Potentials Predicts the Critical Role of Active Membrane Currents. Neuron 79: 375-390. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.05.023

https://pubpeer.com/publications/21807C46EEA0433EC98F0986432580

Those who enjoy Gannt charts and Pert diagrams can study the report of the 'ramp-up phase' of the HBP (pdf); it also contains the budget numbers.

https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/documents/10180/17648/TheHBPReport_LR.pdf/18e5747e-10af-4bec-9806-d03aead57655

There has also been something of a recent campaign against the HBP :

http://www.nature.com/news/brain-fog-1.15514

http://www.nature.com/news/row-hits-flagship-brain-plan-1.15519

http://neurofuture.eu/

Free-running criticism of the HBP

http://mathbabe.org/2015/10/20/guest-post-dirty-rant-about-the-human-brain-project/

but I'd agree with most of the points, except the one about the statistics of transistors on a Pentium. I expect the brain will work with much more random connectivity than in a CPU.

Sadly for us Europeans, the private and public US initiatives are much more useful. Just look at the utility of the Allen Institute's data to all of us.