by Sebastian Seung
Reviewed by Daniel J. Levitin
Wall Street Journal
4 Feb 12
….He begins with the observation that each of us is unique, differing from one another in uncountable ways…..
A new approach to studying brains and individual differences involves making maps of how neurons connect to one another. Following the term genome, these are called connectomes.
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….patterns of neural connections give rise to our perceptions of the world, our reactions to perception and, ultimately, our uniqueness. Although obtaining connectomes for even the simpler brain of the mouse is beyond our technological abilities today, Mr. Seung lays out the technical hurdles and proposes some more attainable near-term goals. But he also makes a passionate case for a decade-long investment of time and energy, comparable to the Human Genome Project, to advance the cause.
Even in the current speculative realm, the connectome is a fascinating, occasionally frustrating, subject. One view is that each connectome or connectivity map will give rise to one and only one brain state and that different connectomes cannot give rise to the same state. Yet the widespread use of pharmaceutical agents such as Prozac and Ritalin suggests otherwise—that knowing the connectome is unlikely to tell us all we need to know about a person's thoughts, feelings, opinions and personality.
The levels of various chemicals in our brains can clearly be altered pharmaceutically. They are also influenced by diet, exercise, stress and normal biological cycles. Even if we know how the neurons are connected and the strength of their synapses, the amount of dopamine, for example, that is available in the brain at any given moment will influence firing patterns. This could cause the same neural network (a group of connected neurons) to give rise to different thoughts or different networks to give rise to similar thoughts.
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Knowing the wiring is a crucial operation in understanding the nature of thought, but it seems not to be enough; we also need to know the precise chemical soup du jour in the brain. And one more additional, crucial step is understanding which types of experiences and environmental events can change the brain's wiring and in what ways….
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...245115762.html
Originally Posted by Sheila
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