The brain has been mapped to the smallest, but still nobody knows how all the parts communicate with each other.
The brain has been mapped to the smallest, but still nobody knows how all the parts communicate with each other.
A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences took a major step in unraveling the brain tissue by examining a small part of the brain of mice as reported by ScienceDaily.
Network connections in the brain previously thought too complex to describe, but molecular biology and computing methods have evolved to the point where the National Institutes of Health announced a $ 30 million plan to map the "connectome" man.
The study shows the power of a new method for tracing brain circuits.
USC College neurologist Richard H. Thompson and Larry W. Swanson used the method to trace circuits associated with the enjoyment of food.
The circuit appears as a round circular patterns which indicate that at least in this part of the rat brain, a network diagram looks like a distributed network.
The neurologist is divided between those with the traditional view that the brain is organized in a hierarchical most parts supply centers of higher consciousness, and those with a more recent view that the brain is a flat network similar to the Internet.
"We started in one place and see the connections. It led to a series of very complicated from the rotation and the circuit. It is not a diagram that is organization. There is no up and down," said Swanson who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Professor in Milo Don and Lucille Appleman part of Biological Sciences at USC College.
Other brain circuitry tracking research is currently focused only on the signal, one direction, one location.
"We can see up to four relationships in one circuit on the same animal at the same time. It is our technological innovation," said Swanson.
The Internet model would explain the brain's ability to overcome much local damage, Swanson said.
"You can knock out almost any part of the Internet and other parts still work."
"There are usually alternate pathways along the nervous system. It is difficult to say that any part of the total is very important," said Swanson.
Swanson's first rebuttal of the distribution model of the brain appear in bukunyaBrain Architecture: Understanding the Basic Plan (Oxford University Press, 2003).
The PNAS study appears to support his view.
"There is an alternative model. It has not been proven, but let us think back to the traditional way of how the brain works," he said.
"The part of the brain cortex that you feel is very important is not the only part of the nerve that determines our behavior."
The research described in the PNAS study was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.
