Photo courtesy of Washington University.
“Cutting edge technology is taking us farther and faster into an extraordinarily challenging domain where the human brain is trying to understand the human brain,” declares Washington University’s Dr. David van Essen, lead investigator for the Human Connectome Project, a consortium of nine institutions.
The $30 million Human Connectome Project plans to create a wiring diagram for the human brain in the next five years. This massive undertaking, led by Washington University School of Medicine and the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, will make a road map showing how each small area of the cerebral cortex connects to the rest of the brain. The map will give detailed information down to a resolution of 1-2 cubic millimeters.
The brain contains about 90 billion nerve cells (neurons) that make approximately 150 trillion synapses (connections) with each other. Trying to untangle such a vast network seems dazzling in its audacity. However, the Human Genome Project seemed like an impossible dream at one point.
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