Using a new kind of MRI scanner, scientists at the National Institutes of Health mapped the connections in the human brain, revealing an intricate, grid-like structure.
“Before, we had just driving directions. Now, we have a map showing how all the highways and byways are interconnected,” says Van Wedeen, a member of the Human Connectome Project. “Brain wiring is not like the wiring in your basement, where it just needs to connect the right endpoints. Rather, the grid is the language of the brain and wiring and re-wiring work by modifying it.”
[via Matt Mullenweg]
Looks like my hair when i wake up.
Do you think connectomics will have any bearing on Chalmers’ “hard problem” of consciousness, or is it only capable of explaining the computational aspect of the mind? Though Sebastian Seung’s recent popularization gives a good introduction to techniques and advances in brain mapping, I’m at a loss at how this approach is going to solve any deep philosophical questions, which I find the most interesting. Still, interesting stuff!
There’s a cool demo of this for the WebGL X Toolkit
– demo: http://demos.goxtk.com/brainfibers/
– about the toolkit: https://github.com/xtk/X#readme