Warm-up

1. Are these artificial things useful? Complete this table with your partner(s) and share your ideas

2. Read the title of the text and try to predict which words/word combinations can be found here. After reading the text see who is the best predictor

I. Read the text

A top British professor has told a cutting-edge ideas conference he is close to building a copy of human brain. Professor Henry Markham told the annual Technology, Entertainment, Design global conference that a working synthetic brain can be built in the next decade. He told his audience: "It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years." He set himself a challenge by stating that if he succeeded, he would demonstrate the results to all sceptics. He said: “I wish they believed that it’s real.”Professor Markram is director of the Blue Brain project, which aims to engineer mammals' brains from laboratory data. He has already had success with creating parts of a rat’s brain. Markham said the human brain was so complex, it was an “almost frightening organ”.

Professor Markham hoped his research would lead to new treatments for mental illnesses. He said: "There are two billion people on the planet suffering from mental disorder." Markham believes synthetic brain technology will reduce the need for experiments on animals. "We cannot keep on doing animal experiments forever," he said. This will please many animal rights activists, who say such research is cruel. He hopes to create a kind of animal brain models.

II. Comprehension check