[Tyler]

Connectomics Reveals Brain Networking Core
     

The relatively young field of science known as connectomics, which we first
reported on
earlier this year, has already produced some
intriguing new results about the human brain. The idea is to build a
"connectome" or neural connection map of the entire brain. Like the
human genome project this was initially met with skepticism as a
seemingly impossible task. Early projects involved removing the brain,
slicing it, and scanning the slices. The Brain
Mysteries blog reports on a new method based on diffusion MRI
scans of living human brains. The result is the first high resolution
map of millions of neural pathways in the brain. The map showed something
unexpected, a single network hub "that may be key
to the workings of both hemispheres of the brain". Even more
interesting is the researcher's conclusion about the relationship between
neural connections and dynamic activity: "we can measure a
significant correlation between brain anatomy and brain dynamics. This
means that if we know how the brain is connected we can predict what the
brain will do". For more on this
interesting new discovery, see the researcher's paper,
Mapping
the Structural Core of Human Cerebral Cortex.
   

http://robots.net/article/2584.html