a connectome is a complete map of all the synaptic connections within an individuals nervous system.
a connectome is a complete map of all the synaptic connections within an individuals nervous system.
a complete map of all the synaptic connections within an individuals nervous system is a?
connectome
mapping the connectome at the "microscale" (micrometer resolution) means building a complete map of the neural systems, neuron-by-neuron. the challenge of doing this becomes obvious: the number of neurons comprising the brain easily ranges into the billions in more complex organisms. the human cerebral cortex alone contains on the order of 10 neurons linked by 10 synaptic connections. by comparison, the number of base-pairs in a human genome is 3×10. a few of the main challenges of building a human connectome at the microscale today include: data collection would take years given current technology, machine vision tools to annotate the data remain in their infancy, and are inadequate, and neither theory nor algorithms are readily available for the analysis of the resulting "brain-graphs". to address the data collection issues, several groups are building high-throughput serial electron microscopes (kasthuri "et al.", 2009; bock "et al". 2011). to address the machine-vision and image-processing issues, the open connectome project is "alg-sourcing" (algorithm outsourcing) this hurdle. finally, statistical graph theory is an emerging discipline which is developing sophisticated pattern recognition and inference tools to parse these brain-graphs (goldenberg "et al.", 2009).
connectome
percolation (from the latin word "percolatio", meaning filtration) is a theoretical model used to understand the way activation and diffusion of neural activity occur within neural networks. percolation is a model used to explain how neural activity is transmitted across the various connections within the brain. often it is easiest to understand percolation theory by explaining its use in epidemiology. individuals that are infected with a disease can spread the disease through contact with others in their social network. those who are more social and come into contact with more people will help to propagate the disease quicker than those who are less social. therefore factors such as occupation and sociability influence the rate of infection. now, if one were to think of "neurons" as the "individuals" and "synaptic connections" as the "social bonds" between people, then one can determine how easily messages between neurons will spread. when a neuron fires, the message is transmitted along all synaptic connections to other neurons until it can no longer continue. synaptic connections are considered either open or closed (like a social or unsocial person) and messages will flow along any and all open connections until they can go no further. just like occupation and sociability play a key role in the spread of disease, so too do the number of neurons, synaptic plasticity and long-term potentiation when talking about neural percolation.
percolation (cognitive psychology)