• entries
    59
  • comments
    165
  • views
    25,443

Wiring diagram of the brain

dreinke

Entry posted by dreinke

857 views

 Share

This sounds like something every stroke researcher should be doing after the protocols they are testing, mainly to figure out where the changes are occurring. The other thing to work on would be to find those survivors that have completely recovered and scan their brains with this to find out where neuroplasticity has moved the dead functions. If only I could figure out a way to get this type of question in front of those stroke researchers. If anyone has a clue please email me. I will stick my neck out to anyone including the stroke associations.

 

A Wiring Diagram of the Brain

 

New technologies that allow scientists to trace the fine wiring of the brain more accurately than ever before could soon generate a complete wiring diagram--including every tiny fiber and miniscule connection--of a piece of brain. Dubbed connectomics, these maps could uncover how neural networks perform their precise functions in the brain, and they could shed light on disorders thought to originate from faulty wiring, such as autism and schizophrenia.

 

The brain is essentially a computer that wires itself up during development and can rewire itself," says Sebastian Seung, a computational neuroscientist at MIT. "If we have a wiring diagram of the brain, that could help us understand how it works." For example, scientists previously identified the part of the songbird's brain that is important in the birds' ability to generate songs. Seung would ultimately like to develop a wiring diagram of this structure in order to elucidate the features underlying its unique capability.

 

I know this is probably decades away but if we(survivors) don't start putting future goals out there like President Kennedy did for the moon landing we won't ever get there. Stay tuned, I'll figure out some way to get a set of goals started.

 

I sent an email to Mr. Seung thanking him for his work on this and pointing out the usefulness of using this for stroke rehabilitation research. We have to get stroke rehab research in front of everyone possible so if you see an opportunity to suggest something that may help stroke research please point it out to the persons involved. The squeaky wheel does get oiled and I plan on screeching like Red River oxcarts.

 Share

7 Comments

Recommended Comments

swilkinson

you go for it Dean, you have the intelligence and the energy that some of us no longer have.

 

I always read your blogs with interest.

 

Sue.

Link to comment
Ethyl17

Dean: you squeak away baby-lol! I have had an exhausting day. I am back to work and had to take Bruce for a last minute MD appointment because some of his info for the upcoming Baclofen trial was out of date. After 5 hours of work, 3 hours of MD and lab appts and another hour of CT rush hour traffic, we had dinner and Bruce called it a day. I was looking forward to PJs, a glass of wine and a quick check in here. And Lo and behold, my Dean has blogged. As much as I tried to stop it and save it for tomorrow, I just had to read it tonight. You are that compelling. I went to a Nursing seminar today to be educated on the new Federal guidelines for crime in a Skilled Nursing Facility. While this is not common certainly in my SNF, it certainly is nationally and our Federal Government has invested millions in requirements to report and correct. There is money out there. How to tap it is another issue. But if the Federal Government under Obama is now looking into Healthcare concerns, you could not have picked a better time. As I wade through these pages of requirements, I will look for perhaps some insights into how the money is allocated and where to perhaps access those grants: who is doing the research, who has the best results and who has the most pull politically to route it. Keep it up, you have many supporters hre. Debbie

Link to comment
mikev

Dean, If you have links or e-mail addresses we need to be flooding with requests I, for one, am willing to do just that and pass those request needs to all my friends and e-mail contacts. It may be my imagination or a feeling but it seems that there is an increased general interest in neurosciences world wide. Time to make more wheel noise. Mike

Link to comment
thejule1

This reminds me of the neuroscientist book My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. She made a remarkable full recovery after 8 years. I'm sure her age (37) at the time, her brain scientist background, and her motivation to recover helped her as well. Has anyone read this story? Some parts a bit too technical but otherwise an amazing story on what she went through to recover.

Julie

Link to comment
dreinke

This reminds me of the neuroscientist book My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. She made a remarkable full recovery after 8 years. I'm sure her age (37) at the time, her brain scientist background, and her motivation to recover helped her as well. Has anyone read this story? Some parts a bit too technical but otherwise an amazing story on what she went through to recover.

Julie

I liked her book also because it does show what persistence can do. However she didn't provide a brain scan so we could tell if her recovery was mostly from the penumbra or if there was lots of dead brain functions to recover. That is the reason the analyst in me does not appreciate first person recovery books because without a decent diagnosis there is no way to correlate anyones recovery with your own.

Dean

Link to comment
kanderson

great idea dean, i am impressed. neoroscience is a very technical subject. far more than most of us can understand. i am ready to join the others about making noise. there has to be more to recovery than what we have been told up to now. as we know the brain is a remarkable organ in what it is capable of doing to repair itself. you go dean. thankyou for the info.

Link to comment
Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×