Neurology
Category archives for Neurology
Fear and Conservatism: Biologically Intertwined?
Posted by Jeff on January 3, 2011 Last week, I shared an extraordinary study describing the human brain’s “connectome” – our first glimpse into how neural connections are made in our brains. Recently, several studies have appeared attempting to link one’s political views with our neuroanatomy – is this coincidence or somehow tied to the impending 2012 election cycle?
Fruit Fly Brain Atlas Decoded
Posted by Jeff on December 31, 2010 My previous postings on the fruit fly brain generated quite a bit of interest, and I wanted to share with you some more detail that I received from Terry C.-W. Yeh, researcher at the Applied Scientific Computing Division of the National Center for High-Performance Computing in Taiwan. Thank you, Terry, for being so gracious! I…
Our Brain’s Atlas: Exploring Connections
Posted by Jeff on December 29, 2010 I have been exploring our “Brain’s Atlas” introduced in my recent post and discovered an extraordinary resource: the Relationship Viewer. A snapshot is shown to the right, appearing as a spiraling multi-colored pin wheel.
Human Connectome: Our Brain’s Atlas
Posted by Jeff on December 27, 2010 If you thought the human genome project was impressive its scope and scale. think about the human connectome project. I recently shared with you the fruit fly brain atlas, comprised of about 100,000 neurons, and compared it to the human brain with some 100 billion neurons. The first high resolution images of the “connectedness” of…
A 3D Tour of the Fruit Fly Brain
Posted by Jeff on December 20, 2010 Inspired by my earlier posting on the fruit fly brain: I received a nice “holiday gift” from a researcher at the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) in Taiwan, Terry C.-W. Yeh. NCHC and the Brain Research Center at the National Tsing Hua University created the FlyCircuit database. This 32 second video gives you a…
Fruit Fly Brain Redux: Readers’ Favorites?
Posted by Jeff on December 18, 2010 My recent posting, The Fruit Fly Brain Atlas Emerges generated quite a bit of interest from readers, perhaps because most of us are visual learners, including myself. One reader’s comment reminded me how fun it was to explore the FlyCircuit database. It’s easy to register; once you’re in, you can not only browse the more…
The Fruit Fly Brain Atlas Emerges
Posted by Jeff on December 14, 2010 As reported in today’s Science Times of The New York Times, a research group in Taiwan led by Dr. Ann-Shyn Chiang has accomplished something that was unimaginable when I was a graduate student in the 1980′s: they have created the first atlas of the brain of a fruit fly at the resolution of a single…