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Whole Human Brain Mapped In 3D

Posted by Soulskill on from the brain-and-brain,-what-is-brain? dept.

ananyo writes "An international group of neuroscientists has sliced, imaged and analysed the brain of a 65-year-old woman to create the most detailed map yet of a human brain in its entirety. The atlas, called 'BigBrain,' shows the organization of neurons with microscopic precision, which could help to clarify or even redefine the structure of brain regions obtained from decades-old anatomical studies (abstract). The atlas was compiled from 7,400 brain slices, each thinner than a human hair. Imaging the sections by microscope took a combined 1,000 hours and generated 10 terabytes of data. Supercomputers in Canada and Germany churned away for years reconstructing a three-dimensional volume from the images, and correcting for tears and wrinkles in individual sheets of tissue."

17 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. So how is she? by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Funny

    After that procedure of mapping her brain, did she recover well? were there any side effects? When will we have the first interviews?

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:So how is she? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      She seems ok, but she can't stop watching FOX for some reason

    2. Re:So how is she? by dkleinsc · · Score: 2

      Well, we replaced it with an electronic brain, a simple one. All it needed to say was "What?" and "Where's the tea?"

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  2. How Complex Can It Be? by lobiusmoop · · Score: 2

    10 terabytes? The entropy for the entire human body is about 700 megabytes as per DNA, surely there must be a lower order of complexity than that in the brain?

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
    1. Re: How Complex Can It Be? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The dna is just the code. The brain represents the running state of that code following 65 years worth of exogenous and endogenous inputs.

    2. Re:How Complex Can It Be? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No? DNA is instructions; if you run a 700 mb program for 65 years, subject to an entire world of input, it will probably generate a lot more than 10 tb of data. The data, in the case of the brain, is the way the neurons connect to each other. Were that complexity limited by DNA we wouldn't be able to remember anything that wasn't already hardcoded into our DNA; we would be non-learning beasts of pure instinct.

    3. Re:How Complex Can It Be? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Fractals are very complex structures produced by very simple equations. The data needed to store a fractal image is much greater than the data needed to store the equation that can generate it.

      Same deal here between DNA and the structures that get built from it.

  3. Surprise! by Sperbels · · Score: 5, Funny

    Boy is she going to be surprised once she wakes up inside of a full brain emulation program.

    1. Re:Surprise! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Thus begins the next Cylon revolution. Not from a transplanted girl dealing with the emotional stress of knowing that her fleshy self has died, but starting from an elderly lady who now has the army of combat drones to successfully force everyone 'off her lawn.'

  4. Redefining the structure of the brain by GeekWithAKnife · · Score: 3, Insightful


    I always worry when such notions arise. After all, everyone has a slightly different brain. some people have entire regions and functions mapped to areas we thought were science fiction just a decade or two ago. (typically the result of serious childhood brain trauma)
    For all we know her brain might differ from the norm, or her regional background might produce a similar anomaly. We'll need many thousands more of such scans.

    While this is and should be a celebrated achievement we must keep in mind that microscopically accurate scans will most likely be required on a per individual basis.
    Perhaps in the future we'll all carry our own 10PB brain map in our sub-dermal biochips.

    --
    A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
  5. Ethics by Picass0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Consider for a moment that were possible. Probably not today, at some point if driver software could be written to run this digital model. If by some long shot it were possible would it be ethically right? What if there were some sense of awareness, personality, fear of the strange circumstances she now finds herself in? She would be without her senses and without any level of input from the outside that she would relate to as a normal person.

    And then consider: Is it right to turn such a system on and off like any other computer?

    1. Re:Ethics by Tighe_L · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It was mostly in jest, but being that it is a simulation, is it real at all. Will it have a soul? I would think that in a few decades that computers would be able to run such a simulation.

    2. Re:Ethics by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Interesting

      On her, no way it's possible. The brain went too long between death and digitisation - no oxygen means rapid and extreme damage. Even if the scan were good enough to get synapse-level tracing (It isn't), it wouldn't run.

      Give it a few more decades though, maybe as much as a century. There's nothing scientifically impossible about it - it's just an engineering challenge. I imagine you'd need to resort to either nondestructive living readout (Future super-MRI?) or some sort of preservation process (Cryonic or chemical).

      Senses can be simulated too. Just wire up to a robot, or a simulated environment.

    3. Re:Ethics by ThreeKelvin · · Score: 2

      A soul? Probably not. But then I've never seen any evidence for souls, so my best bet is that I'm as soulless as an average brick. It wouldn't be fair of me to look down on her for lacking something I don't possess myself.

      Now, the question of if she's real is an interesting one, which has been discussed to death by various philosophers. The discussion usually goes something like:

      Imagine that the test subject has a wholly human brain. There's no question whether the subject is real or not. Now, replace a single neuron with an artificial one. (In this case, simulate it on a computer and put cables in her brain to connect it.) Is she still real? Is she still a human? (I'd say yes, but others might say differently. Some might even say that she lost a bit of her soul.)

      Repeat the procedure until she isn't real any more, or you run out of neurons to replace. If she stopped being real, at which point was it? what's so special about that particular point? (etc.)

    4. Re:Ethics by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

      I wanna be your first upload.

      Oh really? You want to be a beta tester for that? Me, I'm waiting for rev 3, at least.

      Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    5. Re:Ethics by Tighe_L · · Score: 2

      Ahh, but it wouldn't be you, as you are dead. It would be a simulation of you. I would imagine that the brain simulations would be done in the future for ability to retain knowledge of the previous generations. The alive people wouldn't maintain those computer systems for simulations of past generations to have fun. Most likely they would boot you up, consult with you for some fact or advice the put you in sleep mode until next time you are needed.

  6. Re:Now we only have to figure out what it does by fabioalcor · · Score: 5, Funny

    We will not only understand how the human brain works, we will finally understand A WOMAN!