Saturday, March 28, 2009

I wonder what my brain looks like?


Scientists are attempting to map the human brain. Although the graphic representation in this Wired article is quite disturbing:
"The human brain is surprisingly bloody. I've worked in neuroscience labs, and I'm used to seeing brains that are stored in glass jars filled with formaldehyde, the preserved tissue a lifeless gray. But this brain—removed from a warm body just a few hours ago—looks bruised, its folds stained purple. Blood drips from the severed stem, forming puddles on the stainless steel table."
It's interesting to read though the possibilities of mapping the human mind, although being that we're each inextricably unique, I wonder what the point of all this is:
"Although the human atlas is years from completion, a theme is beginning to emerge: Every brain is profoundly unique, a landscape of cells that has never existed before and never will again. The same gene that will be highly expressed in some subjects will be completely absent in others."

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