Описание
In the early summer of 2005 my colleagues Rolf K ö tter, Giulio Tononi,
and I put the finishing touches to a review article (really a position paper)
somewhat ambitiously entitled “ The Human Connectome: A Structural
Description of the Human Brain ” (Sporns et al., 2005). At the time, the
connectome was just an idea, nothing more. The idea seemed simple
enough. The human brain is a complex network whose operation depends
on how its neurons are linked to each other. When attempting to understand the workings of a complex network, one must know how its elements are connected, and how these elements and connections cooperate
to generate network function. The human connectome describes the
complete set of all neural connections of the human brain. It thus constitutes a network map that is of fundamental importance for studies of
brain dynamics and function. When I googled the term “ connectome ”
(just to be sure no one else had thought of it earlier) I remember getting
around 10 hits, none of them relevant to the brain. In fact, some of them
were oddly irrelevant — I recall finding “ connect-to-me ” (a dating site,
I believe) and “ connect-home ” among the search results. As of April
2012 the same Google search returns nearly a quarter million hits. What
happened?
The simple idea of mapping the connections of the human brain in
their entirety has captured the imagination of many, not only neuroscientists but also researchers in adjoining fields interested in human cognition, brain and mental disorders, and complex systems and networks, as
well as members of the general public. I believe it is fair to say that the
connectome and the nascent field of connectomics are beginning to influence the ways many neuroscientists collect, analyze, and think about
their data. Connectomics is directed at integrative function — central to
connectomics is the notion that the brain can be described and understood as a network , not just by way of a metaphor but in the precise
Preface
Детали
- Год издания
- 2012
- Format