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Brain Connectome

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Image of the Week #32, February 28th, 2012:

From:The Age of Connectome: Q&A with Sebastian Seung, by Jennifer Ouellette at Cocktail Party Physics.


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Source: Gigandet X, Hagmann P, Kurant M, Cammoun L, Meuli R, et al. (2008) Estimating the Confidence Level of White Matter Connections Obtained with MRI Tractography. PLoS ONE 3(12): e4006. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004006

Plush toy, or Science? White matter connections in the human brain are imaged using diffusion MRI. This “connectome” is output from a 2008 study by Gigandet et al attempting to determine statistical confidence in mapping neural connectivity.