“The highways of the Human Brain” uncovered

"The highways of the Human Brain" uncovered

From the 19th century people have hypothesized that the quintessence of human individuality is stored in the connections between our neurons. With the advent of technology, we now can find the true nature of our identity.

Up till now, our knowledge has been founded on observations of brain activity when different lobes are damaged or activated as seen on imaging techniques like functional MRI but little has been known on how they relate to one another. Not knowing how these different regions interrelate is like trying to work a telephone network works without knowing where all the wires go.

Tim Behrens of the University of Oxford, who is a member of the Human Connectome Project, says "You're missing huge amounts of information if you don't know which regions are connected to other regions.”. The HCP aims to map the large-scale connections of 1200 human brains and is expected to start delivering the goods in late 2012.

With around 10,000 connections each for the 100 billion neurons, mapping the human brain will be no easy feat, and charting every single link could take decades. The HCP will first undertake the major connections between different brain regions, and showing how these connections differ between individuals.

Posted by George Daniels on Tuesday January 03 2012, 4:23 AM EDT. Ref: Tim Behrens et al. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0