Complex Insight - Understanding our world

Great article in the New Yorker explaining why claims that a certain part of the brain is responsible for a given function while making good headlines - often is not as simple as it seems. The smallest element of a brain image that an fMRI can pick out is something called a voxel. But voxels are much larger than neurons, and, in the long run, the best way to understand the brain is probably not by asking which particular voxels are most active in a given process. It will instead come from asking how the many neurons work together within those voxels. And for that, fMRI may turn not out not to be the best technique, despite its current convenience. It may ultimately serve instead as the magnifying glass that leads us to the microscope we really need. If most of the action in the brain lies at the level of neurons rather than voxels or brain regions (which themselves often contain hundreds or thousands of voxels), we may need new methods, like optogenetics or automated, robotically guided tools for studying individual neurons; Click on the title or image to learn more.

thanks to Jed for the heads up on this. Great article from Forbes on Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen's  Allen Institute for Brain Science research institute who are pursuing a big science approach to understanding the workings of the human brain. Well worth reading. Click on the headline or image to learn more.

I.B.M. has just announced the world’s grandest simulation of a brain, all running on a collection of ninety-six of the world’s fastest computers. Are full-scale simulations of human brains imminent, as some media accounts seem to suggest? Good article in the New Yorker, on the Compass project to simualte the brain of a Macaque monkey using the neuromorphic engineering approach pioneered by Carver Mead. Worth reading. Click on the the title or image to learn more.