Simulation of the human brain: wait for the first results
The date of publication of the results of the Human Connectome project has been announcedCopper news based on the materials of the New Scientist – Smart Guide to 2012: Mapping the human brain.
The Human Connectome Project will begin publishing the first results by the end of 2012.
The aim of the project is to fully describe the connections between the neurons of the human brain and identify possible correlations between the structure of neural networks and mental abilities, as well as the behavior of a particular person.
Human Connectome was launched by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2009 with initial funding of $30 million. Its first stage is designed for five years and involves studying the brains of 1,200 volunteers.
The project is being implemented by two consortia – the association of doctors of Massachusetts General Hospital (Massachusetts General Hospital) with scientists from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a consortium of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota.
A connectome, by analogy with the genome, is called the complete structure of connections in the nervous system. For the first time, a complete connectome was described for the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, which has only 302 neurons. In the human brain, the total number of neurons exceeds 100 billion.
In previous studies of the human brain, the method of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used, which allows us to establish only a connection between damage to a part of the brain and a violation of a particular cognitive function, as well as to record the excitation of certain brain centers in response to stimuli.
In the Human Connectome project, brain activity is visualized using different approaches. Along with fMRI, the method of diffuse magnetic resonance imaging is also used, which allows mapping the distribution of the white matter of the brain, which is part of the insulating nerve fiber sheath. Another study in the framework of the project is fMRI at rest. This allows you to track spontaneous fluctuations in activity in different parts of the brain, united by a single neural network.
At the first stage of the Human Connectome project, scientists will identify the main ways of communication between different parts of the brain and their variations in different people. "Human Connectome" is called a more ambitious project than the successfully completed "Human Genome".
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23.12.2011