IBM Researchers Create the Most Detailed Brain Map Yet

A significant stride towards reverse-engineering the darn thing

By Clay Dillow Posted 07.28.2010 at 4:45 pm 11 Comments

A Map of the Mind The highways and byways connecting the various regions of a Macaque monkey's brain. PNAS

Researchers at IBM have created the most complex neurological map ever seen, detailing the comprehensive long-distance network that makes up the macaque monkey brain in unprecedented detail. Such a roadmap through the brain's complex networking processes could have major implications for attempts at reverse-engineering neural networks and creating cognitive computer chips that "think" as powerfully and efficiently as the biological brain.

Focusing on a long-distance network connecting 383 brain regions and 6,602 long-distance connections that function like highways to connect disparate regions of the brain. Shorter, more localized connections were found to carry signals within regions.

But most importantly, they found what they describe in a paper published in PNAS as a "tightly integrated core" that might be they key to cognition in higher-thinking biological creatures. That core might be what gives us consciousness (we won't get into the philosophical implications there). Further, the core isn't located in one, or even two regions. The researchers found it stretches through the premotor cortex, prefrontal cortex, temporal lobe, thalamus, visual cortex and a handful of other regions.

Another surprising find: the prefrontal cortex, though at the front of the brain, might actually serve as its central information hub that distributes information throughout the brain.

The study included mapping of four times as many regions and three times the number of connections than the largest previous attempt. Those findings could finally help researchers mimic the brain -- which, even in this seemingly advanced era, is something of a mystery to us. That in turn could lead to network architecture and computer chips that process and move information as quickly and seamlessly as our brains do.

[Kurzweil AI]

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11 Comments

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ScottieD

07/28/10 at 5:54 pm

Beautiful and fascinating, first two words that come to mind.

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monkz0390

07/28/10 at 7:40 pm

"That in turn could lead to network architecture and computer chips that process and move information as quickly and seamlessly as our brains do"

If elephants are among the smartest animals this research should be conducted on their brains. The human brain, however is interesting and could bring some insight on neurological illnesses.☺☺

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kormiko

07/28/10 at 8:21 pm

Another step closer for everyone to upload their mind to Brainbook.

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bigburb

07/28/10 at 11:08 pm

Meh.

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bigburb

07/28/10 at 11:09 pm

Meh.

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flash.killer

07/29/10 at 5:17 am

apple is already cooking up the iBrain
unfortunately it will probably have Alzheimer and will not hear very well

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fartsniffer

07/29/10 at 10:05 am

ibm are dark
www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/02/41753

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sanud002

07/29/10 at 2:49 pm

I think this breakthrough may also, one day, help to integrate our brain functions with outside sources such as being able to control a car with your thoughts. The more we know about specific areas of the brain and the unique brainwaves they can create the closer we could come to this type of man/machine synthesis. The first steps of this system have already been developed actually in fighter jets. I'll post a link to a video about the system. Its pretty unbelievable!

http://www.ndep.us/Brainwaves

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Andrew A

08/04/10 at 6:06 am

Ahhh, crap, Skynet here we come. I am not a religious man by any stretch of the term, I believe that the bible has some good ideas and some really screwed up ones. But I think we can take a lesson from it in this situation. As a euphemism, or as your belief, God created man in his own image, look where that has gotten us. Read the news and think about it for a second. I am not saying to stop research into this field, on the contrary, the more knowledge we gain the better off we are. But I don't want to have a computer that doesn't want to come to work that day because it is sad. There are Asimovs rules, but anything that works like a human will act like one. I would really feel hurt if we won the race to become the dumbest sentient species on a planet to the thing I check my e-mail on.

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Sky_Jokiel

08/10/10 at 10:57 am

Once you make computers think like us... why wont they be able to rebel like us?

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pottzy87

09/15/10 at 11:36 pm

Anything with a conscience will have unpredictability, just like other animals and humans, so that might be a bad idea, as for trying to make computers store and move information like us, that's a lil different but equally complex.

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