In an article today at the Institute or Electrical and Electronic
Engineers (IEEE) Spectrum web site, Megan Scudellari reports on
a symposium yesterday in Maryland which provided an update on the
Human Connectome Project's (HCP) achievements and future directions.
HCP was initiated by the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) in 2010
and by acquiring the highest resolution data of the structural and functional
connections in the human brain, it is attempting to understand how those
neural pathways make us human.
The brains of 1,200 healthy adults have been scanned thus far using new
high powered, high resolution magnetic resonance (MR) hardware.
The data set of 9.5 petabytes is made freely available to neurologists around
the world and more than 5.600 investigators have accessed the database.
One custom MRI scanner is known as "Connectom" and it is located
at Massachusetts General Hospital. It can track the movement of water
through the white matter in the brain. It's capabilities are impressive and
the power requirements for it to generate such strong magnetic fields
are mind-boggling -
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Megan Scudellari, IEEE
This diffusion MRI enables the visualization of brain networks with 10 times the level of detail possible with conventional MRI scanners. And it does the job so much faster. Getting a high-resolution 3-D image of the brain used to take 24 hours. Now it takes well under an hour, said Rosen. To achieve that kind of speed and resolution, the machine draws 22 megawatts of power—about the same as a nuclear-powered submarine. “It’s a lot of current and a lot of water cooling in one compact space,” said Rosen.
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The researchers have already made some interesting findings. It turns out
that our neural pathways are mapped out in a orthogonal grid-like geometry
and are then folded to the curved shape of the brain.
This ran contrary to the mapping that many had previously assumed.
One presenter described the geometry as being more like the grid-like
street structure of Manhattan rather than like the non-orthogonal streets
of Paris.
One report indicates that brain scanning has reached a point where it
has shown that each person's brain activity is unique like a fingerprint
and can presently be used to identify an individual with 99% accuracy.
Researchers hope to get new insights into diseases such as multiple sclerosis
and to find whether they can get a better prognosis for a patient in a coma.
Article here -
http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-o...ery-unsettling
Video of Connectome Celebration 2016 conference here (4h21m) -
https://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=18808&bhcp=1