New Map IDs the Core of the Human Brain

gerald626 writes "An international team of researchers has created the first complete high-resolution map of how millions of neural fibers in the human cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain responsible for higher-level thinking — connect and communicate. Their groundbreaking work identified a single network core, or hub, that may be key to the workings of both hemispheres of the brain. So basically our brain is a network connected to a hub. I wonder if I can get an upgrade to a GigE switch?"

GigE

[Tubal-Cain]

I wonder if I can get an upgrade to a GigE switch?

Are you sure it would be an upgrade? The brain is a pretty incredible organ.

Maybe Descartes wasn't so far off...

[wherrera]

Their newly mapped "medial and parietal cortex hub" is pretty close to the pineal gland [wikipedia.org], after all :).

Re:Now to find out what it does.

[Hao Wu]

Imagine fitting your kids with filters and "plug-ins" to make sure they turn out a certain way... there will be modules for "Kindness".... or "Pride" (no matter whether it is earned- your child will always feel proud).

"Christian" filters... "Jihad" algorithms.... Conservative and Liberal perception devices.... Behavioral controls, perhaps used as terms of parole (for violent criminals OR political prisoners).

Why have disagreeable children when you can program perfectly behaved clones of yourself?

Re:Now to find out what it does.

[Chemisor]

> Imagine fitting your kids with filters and "plug-ins" to make sure they turn out a certain way.

We already do. It's called "parenting". You do it by talking to them, and yes, it does work if you do it properly.

connectomics? Ugh. No ad agency on the team

[smchris]

Can't decide whether this is great news or not.

On the one hand, it should give AI research some inspiration on how to interface various AI functions.

On the other hand, there's the slacker nature of evolution. Is the human brain really the _best_ we can do? The paradigm might set back AI theorizing for decades.
   

Connectome versus connectionism

[Xeth]

I'm always surprised by the apparent discontinuity between the sort of AI research that goes on in computer science departments (where "connectionism" is a dirty word), and the fact that a lot of modern neuroscientists seem to think that we'll solve a lot of the brain by figuring out the connections.

And, honestly, I don't think that DSI/DTI is really going to give us very much insight beyond bulk connectionism. When I spoke to Walter Schneider at a Neuromorphic computing workshop this past April, he told me that these sorts of processes operate at at a resolution around a tenth of a millimeter. While that's good for determining the highways of the brain, you can't very well figure out how a steel mill works by looking at a map its delivery trucks follow.

Highway map not Core map

[SubComdTaco]

The article is really light on details, yes IRTFA. It describes its use of a "highly sensitive MRI variant, called diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI), to depict the orientation of multiple fibers that cross a single location." So what they found was the highways or major paths that neuronal axons use when they "cross a single location". Sporns said. "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." This is like saying that since we know what highways connect between certain cities we can now predict what the cities will do. There was no mention of the primitive brain, "limbic system", or how that system connects to and interacts with the cortex or how this interaction fits into their findings. Don't get me wrong, this information is significant importance, especially for neurosurgeons, neurosurgery intervention and brain injury assessment, especially if these patterns prove to have a degree of consistency in a large scale study.