“By mapping every synapse in the brain, researchers hope to create a ‘connectome’ — a diagram that would elucidate the brain’s activity at a level of detail far outstripping today’s most advanced brain-monitoring tools like fMRI.
…A full set of images of the human brain at synapse-level resolution would contain hundreds of petabytes of information, or about the total amount of storage in Google’s data centers, Lichtman estimates.
A map of the mind’s circuitry would allow researchers to see the wiring problems that might underpin disorders like autism and schizophrenia.” (Wired News)
But is it really ‘wiring problems’ which underlie such disorders?
Related? Misreading the Mind
Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, argues against neuroreductionism. How can we get beyond the fact that modern neuroscience is in the process of throwing out the only reality that we know, the ghost in the machine of the self? (Los Angeles Times op-ed)
