The Many Problems with Brain MappingĪ previous post detailed many very serious problems with this approach ( See The Limits of Current Neuroscience). The details of these three scales and computer simulations will be presented below after a summary of the problems with the entire connectome approach. Some find that using a centrifuge could help to separate the slices from any liquid to give scientists a better view of the slices. Small studies looking at axons and membranes using electron microscopes with brain slices.

Medium size studies looking at axonal bundles and connections using brain light microscopes with brain slices.

Whole brain studies using fMRI and computer simulations of brain tissue. This post will describe the current research done in the three major scales that are currently being studied. Mental events affect organelles, synapses, neurons, glia, immune cells, neuronal hubs with local and long distance connectivity, brain regions, whole brain, whole body and interpersonal levels all at once. The totality of the connections is called the “connectome.” This post will describe the progress made in mapping the connectome thus far, as well as the problems in this approach.Ī major problem for these studies is to determine at what scale to study the brain. Large projects all over the world are now funded to map the neuronal circuits. In fact, these synapses are part of a very dynamic living cellular process that includes many kinds of glia with elaborate networks across the entire brain and operates over many different scales at the same time. There are approximately 80 billion neurons and there are up to tens of thousands of possible connections from each neuron, which makes the number of synapses an unfathomable astronomical number. The holy grail of many neuroscients is to map neuronal connections and from this explain how the brain (and mind) works.

Human brain mapping conference 2015