Interesting article on a project intended to map the connections linking the 85 billion neurons of a human brain, collectively known as the connectome. The trick, though, lies in understanding how they function as a network. "There is overwhelming evidence that human cognitive functions depend on the activity and coactivity of large populations of neurons in distributed networks." So to some a neiron-by-neuron scan is unnecessary. ""If you want to study the rainforest, you don't need to look at every leaf and every twig and measure its position and orientation. It's too much detail." So the project is looking at larger-scale maps of neural wiring. A lot could be learned. "All the normal functions of the brain, the storage of information about the world, our memories, the way we perceive the world, the behaviours we learn, are all probably encoded in connectivity." Via Alexander Hayes.
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