Mapping The Brain Synapse By Synapse To Explore The Mind with Jeff Lichtman

A superstar of neuroscience Jeff Lichtman will take us on a tour through the brain, the mind, and every single connection that your neurons make. Can we have a complete map of the brain all its connections? And what would it tell us about our own minds?
What does the human brain actually looks like? What is special about the human brain? How do human brains store information? What is connectomics, and why do we do it? What is the relationship between information and understanding?
Human brains are unusual given that most of our behaviours are learned. In what form this learned knowledge is stored is not known. To learn how and where our experiences are stored, Jeff Lichtman has been developing new techniques with the aim of seeing the brain as completely as possible – that is to the level of every single synapse that connects every single nerve cell. We use modern very high-resolution imaging techniques with a good deal of aid from computer scientists at Google to map the wiring diagram that connects nerve cells to each other at synapses. I will describe our studies where we have looked at a few data sets where we have mapped all the connections between nerve cells. As with the development of any new method to apprehend a previously unseen world, the results show many unexpected things.
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[aprylvanryn]

I like this guy. He's obviously intelligent and explains the information in a way that is both comprehensive and easy to understand. Thanks

[GlobalScienceNetwork]

The strong vs. weak synapse concept is really interesting. A neuron will always fire at the same threshold and same strength. However, the synaptic strength can vary. Once you realize that learning is done through reduction it really helps you understand how the brain works. After realizing this a few years ago I used to think that really smart people's brains reduced faster which is why they learned more quickly. Basically, it takes fewer attempts to prune away weak connections. However, this would mean they will not have as much potential to learn when they are older. This also would mean that smart people are more like to believe what they learn without questioning the information. The idea that some synapses get stronger though means there is another dynamic at play as well. It is also how quickly can your brain make stronger synaptic connections. I bet with proper sleep, diet, and exercise brains can do this more effectively.

[GlobalScienceNetwork]

This is great work! It would be really cool to get segmented neurons at a precise location of the brain at different points of life. This would make it clear how the number of synapses change over time. The number of synapses in the brain likely reduce significantly with age. The other synapses then have more relative input and that could be the main driver of learning. The question is do the number of synapses to surrounding cells also increase while the others decrease? This data set seems to imply this is likely not the case as it was from a 45-year-old individual. It would also be cool to look at pieces of tissues in other areas to see if the pattern is the same.

[leapdaniel]

Very cool! The HO1 release web address is shown at 35:44, and at the very end he talks about the effort to map the entire connectome of the mouse brain.

[GlobalScienceNetwork]

This is great work! It would be really cool to get segmented neurons at a precise location of the brain at different points of life. This would make it clear how the number of synapses change over time. The number of synapses in the brain reduces significantly with age. The other synapses then have more relative input and that could be the main driver of learning. Dr. Lichtman seems to think that the additional strong synapses are a key part of how the brain learns. This may be the case but it is surprising the me that 98 percent of the synapses connect via less than three synapses to other cells. Perhaps each cell has a certain number of connections to receive a baseline input. To achieve the desired firing pattern connections can be removed or strengthened. My thought is that strengthening the connection is short-term memory. If it keeps being used the synapse strengthens further and other inputs will be reduced. It is important to note that just because the synapse strength increases or additional synapses are added to learn does not mean the brain is plastic. Once something is learned it can not be unlearned.