What does your brain look like?
There is s new fived year project underway to map the neural pathways of the human brain funded by the National Institutes of Health. They have invented a new type of scanner to do this. They just got it last September, but they have already made some amazing discoveries. Up to now, it looked like the pathways of our brains were about as organized as a plate of spaghetti. Take a look at this image.
Not only is it organized, ity forms a three dimensional matrix kind of like a street map on steroids. There are literally billions of connections with well defined and organized paths. When I saw this photo, it looked familiar. It brought to mind the circuit boards I had seen inside of some of the very earliest computers when I was in college.
Now, take a look at this one.
This is the wire wrapped circuit of a home brew computer built recently by an experimenter. It has 1296 wires and can play chess. Look familiar? The big difference is scale. This is a two dimensional circuit with wires easily seen by the naked eye. Our brains are three dimensional with microscopic sized connections and they weigh several pounds. 1296 connections versus billions.
This brought to mind some questions like:
- “If my brain is that powerful, why can’t I hit the pigs in Angry Birds?”
- “Is the problem that my thoughts get lost in that maze? Should I buy a GPS?”
- “Is everyone’s map a little different? Does mine have an excess of dead end streets?”
- “Is the problem that it’s rush hour and everything is gridlocked or is it three AM and there are only two cars on the road in my brain?
I guess I’ll have to wait while they perfect this machine to see what my brain looks like. Some days, it seems to be just a blank sheet of paper. What do you think yours looks like. I’m anxious to hear.
It may not seem like much, but I received an email this morning that excited me. My short story,”The Blueprint” has been selected for publication in the May issue of the Dallas Writers Journal. It’s a small publication and I’ll be lucky if a few hundred people see it, but I will be paid the grand sum of ten dollars and that makes me a published author.
