New Imaging Method Reveals Brain Connections 95
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, applying a state-of-the-art imaging system to brain-tissue samples from mice, have been able to quickly and accurately locate and count the myriad connections between nerve cells in unprecedented detail, as well as to capture and catalog those connections' surprising variety. A typical healthy human brain contains about 200 billion nerve cells, or neurons, linked to one another via hundreds of trillions of tiny contacts called synapses. It is at these synapses that an electrical impulse traveling along one neuron is relayed to another, either enhancing or inhibiting the likelihood that the second nerve will fire an impulse of its own. One neuron may make as many as tens of thousands of synaptic contacts with other neurons, said Stephen Smith, PhD, professor of molecular and cellular physiology and senior author of a paper describing the study, to be published Nov. 18 in Neuron."
Re:Immunohistochemistry. Also, can't see circuitry (Score:2, Interesting)
Incredible Complexity (Score:5, Interesting)
From the CNET article: [cnet.com]
They found that the brain's complexity is beyond anything they'd imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief, says Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and senior author of the paper describing the study: "One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth.
This is why I am extremely skeptical of claims that we will be able to effectively model the brain, or recreate it artificially, any time soon.