Human Connectome Project

Smart Guide to 2012:
Mapping the human brain

• 23 December 2011 by Linda Geddes
• Magazine issue 2844. Subscribe and save
• The HCP aims to map the
• For similar stories, visit the The Human Brain Topic Guide"
  You're missing huge amounts of information if you don't
                                                  know which regions are connected to other regions," says
                                                  Tim Behrens of the University of Oxford, who is a
                                                  member of the Human Connectome Project/.../
  
  Tangled thoughts (Image: Courtesy Arthur W. Toga of the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at UCLA and Martinos Centre for Biomedical
  Imaging at MGH, Consortium of the Human Connectome Project)
  
  

With 100 billion neurons, each with around 10,000 connections, mapping the human brain will be no easy feat, and charting every single connection could take decades. The HCP will tackle the lowest hanging fruit first: charting the major highways between different brain regions, and showing how these connections vary between individuals. To do this they will combine several imaging tools including something called diffusion MRI, which maps the structure of the white matter that insulates the "wires" of the brain, and also resting-state MRI, which measures how brain regions oscillate in unison as a result of shared connections.

Even this should produce a more complex structural anatomy of the brain than anything ever seen before, and provide tantalising insights into how personality, memory and even consciousness are formed./.../