Understanding the human brain is one of the biggest scientific challenges of the 21st century, and this endeavour has led the European Union to launch the Human Brain Project (HBP) as a FET flagship project. However, even a flagship project such as the HBP cannot study all aspects of the human brain. One aspect that is not covered by the HBP is the extracellular space (ES). The ES of the brain is important in the field of neuropharmacology because it is key to the successful delivery of drugs to the neurons. Also, the importance of the metabolite clearance activity of the ES has led to proposing that a dysfunction of this process plays a role in neurodegenerative diseases. However, no initiative exists to create an ES simulation software that improves the research.
To address this lack of simulation software, the Hippocampus Extracellular Space Simulator Project (HESSP) has been executed. The HESSP’s goal is to develop a simulation software for how substances released by neurons and chemical substances that pass the blood-brain barrier diffuse through the ES. Specifically, the HESSP has developed a software that simulates the diffusion process denominated Hybrid Advanced Particles Simulator (HAPS). The HESSP is an interdisciplinary project that involves computer science, neuroscience and pharmacology, and it addresses the challenge of developing a software architecture to simulate a diffusion process highly complex due to its number of elements formed. The principal researcher had an advisory committee that includes Dr. Herman Moreno, professor Sabina Hrabetova and professor Charle Nicholson. The principal researcher returned to the University of Salamanca for 24 months (part-time employment) and work under the supervision of Dr. Juan M. Corchado and with the support professor Corchado’s research group BISITE.
This project focuses on three main objectives:
• O1. Create a model of the ES of the mouse hippocampus.
• O2. Create simulation software for substances in the mouse hippocampus.
• O3. Make predictions using the simulation software.
During the development of the project, an unexpected result has emerged, the numeric map principle (NMP). The NMP is an hypothesis that explains how the human brain is able to ground arithmetic symbols. It proposes that the human brain uses its navigational system to understand and generate arithmetic knowledge. Its potential impact in resolving the symbol ground problem in numerical cognition and connecting two different areas of cognitive neuroscience, navigation and numerical cognition, has motivated the creation of a fourth objective, O4.
• O4 Formulate, study, and diffuse the numeric map principle.
