Dr. Sebastian Seung (MIT) is an ambitious young scientist; his goal is to unravel the entire wiring diagram of the human brain.  Considering that it took over a decade to determine the wiring diagram for the roundworm C elegans, which has a mere 302 neurons, it is clear that scientists can't leap directly to the 80 billion neuron human brain.  Even so, in his new book Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, Seung makes a very good argument for the value of this long-term project.  In Episode 85 of the Brain Science Podcast I talked with Dr. Seung both about the challenges and potential benefits of this work.

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References and Links:

• Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung.

• Sporns O, Tononi G, Kötter R (2005) The Human Connectome: A Structural Description of the Human Brain. PLoS Comput Biol 1(4): e42. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010042.

• White, J. G., E. Southgate, J. N. Thomson and S. Brenner. (1986) The Structure of the Nervous System of the Nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences, 314 (1165) 1-340. doi: 10.1098/rstb.1986.0056.

• EyeWire.org: where you can help unravel the wiring diagram of the human retina.

Send me feedback at brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.