Blueprint for the Brain
Synopsis
How can three pounds of jelly inside our skulls enable us to do everything that makes us human? For centuries, scientists have been fascinated and puzzled by the mysterious workings of the brain. Now, for the first time, they can re-create in the computer the shapes of every one of the billions of nerve cells that make up our brains, the component parts of the intricate neural circuits that allow us to move, see and hear, to feel and to think. Armed with this new tool, scientists are beginning to decipher the secrets of the brain’s architecture, which may one day enable us to build smart technologies that surpass the capabilities of anything we have today.
This video is based on “One Rule to Grow Them All: A General Theory of Neuronal Branching and Its Practical Application,” a paper published by neuroscientist Hermann Cuntz and colleagues in the online journal PLoS Computational Biology.
News
First five Science Bytes pilot episodes completed
August 17, 2012 — Kikim Media has completed production of five short videos telling stories from the frontiers of science.