Not sure if we're supposed to write a post this week or not, but just in case, here is my post. So I'm reading this book called Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by a neuroscientist by the name of Sebastian Seung. I'm only about 100 pages in, but so far it's pretty cool. Basically the book is detailing theory of connectomics (pronounced like genomics). Connectomics says that people are who they are because of the unique connections between the neurons in their brains. It's basically an extension of genomics, except it's much harder to prove.

See the way our technology is right now, we can't really map the human brain easily or quickly. And since each human brain is different, you would have to map a bunch of different brains before you could really prove that connectomics is really true in any way. See there's two different theories in how our brains make us who we are, because they definitely have something to do with why every person is unique.

The first, and oldest, theory is phrenology. It states that each part of the brain has a specific function relating to it's size and place, I'm pretty sure that's it anyway. See I'm not so sure because it's evolved a lot over the years. It started out as just plain old bigger brains = smarter people, but then that turned out to be not true. There are some statistical correlations between size and certain traits, but those correlations only work over a large general population. When you try to use them to predict anything about a specific person it all goes to hell. But another part of the phrenology theory is that specific parts of the brain do specific things, and that's true. There are definitely parts in your brain that control language and other parts that control your hand and feet and everything else and other parts that control who the hell knows man the brain is uncharted territory. But that theory is too simplistic, and the brain can rewire itself so that no one part of the brain is just linked to one specific function. After someone has an amputation, the part of their brain that controlled their hand that they just lost will be taken over parts of their brain.

So phrenology is too simplistic, but you can actually prove it. Like if a guy can't speak and then you do an autopsy on him and find a hole in his brain you can safely say that that hole is where the language center should be (actual example of 19th century brain science). And this is where connectomics comes in. It's a pretty great explanation, it makes sense you know. Seeing the way our genes work, it makes pretty good sense. Also there's some other scientific reasons that the author talks about but I can't really remember those. Anyway the point is that it makes sense, but there's no good way to prove it. Ok so example. There's this little tiny worm that doesn't actually really have a brain, it just sort of has a collection of neurons, 700 if I can remember correctly. And then from that there's like a million connections between all of the neurons. And so mapping this took a decade. Now there's a hundred billion neurons in the human brain, and I don't know how many connections there are but it's going to be a huge number so mapping it is going to take forever and while our technology is better than in the nineties when the worm-brain mapping was going on, it's still not quite ready and it's still going to take forever.

So that's where I am in the book right now, my guess is that next he's going to talk more about connectomics and how it could be proven. Anyway, it's really interesting. That's all k bye.