IMAGE by Akiyoshi KITAOKA, Professor, Department of Psychology, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan
For years, the human brain has been compared to a computer—but it is a computer without a wiring diagram. Researchers simply do not know how the billions of neurons in the brain are connected to one another, and without this information they cannot fully understand how the brain’s structure gives rise to perception and behavior. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have jumped what many believe to be a major hurdle to preparing that chart by identifying all of the connections to a single neuron and other cells—a discovery that could eventually lead to a 3-D map of the brain’s wiring.
From Physorg.com:
In the March 1 issue of the journal Neuron, the researchers describe how they modified the deadly rabies virus, turning it into a tool that can cross the synaptic space of a targeted nerve cell just once to identify all the neurons to which it is directly connected. The problem neuroscientists are confronted with “is akin to a computer user who tries to figure out how the machine’s electronic chip works by looking down at it; there is no way to figure out how things are connected,” Callaway says. “If you were given a wiring diagram, you could begin to understand how the chip moves electricity and how that operates the computer.”
“We’ve wanted to do this for a very long time and finally found a way to make it possible,” says the study’s senior author, Edward M. Callaway, Ph.D., a professor in the Systems Neurobiology Laboratories. “It will offer us an unprecedented view of the brain.”
- Full article in the June 2007 issue of Scientific American Mind.
- Viewable on-line with subscription to Scientific American Digital.
- More at www.sciammind.com
- To see the next best thing (digitally speaking) visit the GoogleMap mash-up site ViewaCityNew York and Boston.
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