Paths by András Gulyás & Zalán Heszberger & József Biró

Author:András Gulyás & Zalán Heszberger & József Biró
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030475451
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

A similar endeavor started in 2011 when the Human Connectome Project was awarded by the National Institutes of Health. This project is targeted to construct the “map of the brain”, i.e., to discover the structural and functional neural connections within the human brain. The structural map means that we locate specific brain areas (these will give us the nodes) and the physical connections (which will give us the edges) between them. How can one do this without slicing up somebody’s brain? Well, this is what the “non-invasive” brain mapping methods are used for. With a quite complicated method called DSI (Diffusion Spectrum Imaging), the diffusion of water molecules can be observed inside the brain. To get a picture of how DSI works, think about constructing a road network by observing only the movement of cars at various observation points throughout the area you want to map. You cannot see the roads themselves, but you can see the cars at these observation points and you can write the direction and intensity of their movements. By collecting all this information from the observation points, after some non-trivial computerized post-processing, we can create an approximate map of roads and cities in the given area. Interestingly, the process is very similar to the operation of WAZE, a popular navigation software (now owned by Google), where the positions of WAZE users are collected in an anonymized database. In this case, however, the exact map is drawn by volunteer editors, using the draft map deduced from the database. In DSI, the cars are water molecules, which are observed at various points in the brain by using MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) devices. A picture about the human connectome, i.e., an approximate picture of one’s map of neural connections in the brain, obtained via DSI, can be seen in Fig. 6.9.

Fig. 6.9The human neural network in the brain reconstructed via DSI, from Patric Hagmann et al. “Mapping the structural core of human cerebral cortex”. In: PLoS biology 6.7 (2008), e159

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