298 | Jeff Lichtman on the Wiring Diagram of the Brain

298 | Jeff Lichtman on the Wiring Diagram of the Brain

The number of neurons in the human brain is comparable to the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Unlike the stars, however, in the case of neurons the real action is in how they are directly connected to each other: receiving signals over synapses via their dendrites, and when appropriately triggered, sending signals down the axon to other neurons (glossing over some complications). So a major step in understanding the brain is to map its wiring diagram, or connectome: the complete map of those connections. For a human brain that's an intimidatingly complex challenge, but important advances have been made on tinier brains. We talk with Jeff Lichtman, a leader in brain mapping, to gauge the current state of progress and what it implies.

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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/12/09/298-jeff-lichtman-on-the-wiring-diagram-of-the-brain/

Jeff Lichtman received an MD/PhD from Washington University in St. Louis. He is currently the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Santiago Ramón y Cajal Professor of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. He is co-inventor of the Brainbow system for imaging neurons. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jaksot(416)

168 | Anil Seth on Emergence, Information, and Consciousness

168 | Anil Seth on Emergence, Information, and Consciousness

Those of us who think that that the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known tend to also think that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that must be compatible with those law...

11 Loka 20211h 25min

167 | Chiara Marletto on Constructor Theory, Physics, and Possibility

167 | Chiara Marletto on Constructor Theory, Physics, and Possibility

Traditional physics works within the "Laplacian paradigm": you give me the state of the universe (or some closed system), some equations of motion, then I use those equations to evolve the system thro...

4 Loka 20211h 35min

166 | Betül Kaçar on Paleogenomics and Ancient Life

166 | Betül Kaçar on Paleogenomics and Ancient Life

In the question to understand the biology of life, we are (so far) limited to what happened here on Earth. That includes the diversity of biological organisms today, but also its entire past history. ...

27 Syys 20211h 14min

165 | Kathryn Paige Harden on Genetics, Luck, and Fairness

165 | Kathryn Paige Harden on Genetics, Luck, and Fairness

It's pretty clear that our genes affect, though they don't completely determine, who we grow up to be; children's physical and mental characteristics are not completely unrelated to those of their par...

20 Syys 20211h 25min

AMA | September 2021

AMA | September 2021

Welcome to the September 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of q...

16 Syys 20213h 38min

164 | Herbert Gintis on Game Theory, Evolution, and Social Rationality

164 | Herbert Gintis on Game Theory, Evolution, and Social Rationality

How human beings behave is, for fairly evident reasons, a topic of intense interest to human beings. And yet, not only is there much we don't understand about human behavior, different academic discip...

13 Syys 20211h 29min

163 | Nigel Goldenfeld on Phase Transitions, Criticality, and Biology

163 | Nigel Goldenfeld on Phase Transitions, Criticality, and Biology

Physics is extremely good at describing simple systems with relatively few moving parts. Sadly, the world is not like that; many phenomena of interest are complex, with multiple interacting parts and ...

6 Syys 20211h 31min

162 | Leidy Klotz on Our Resistance to Subtractive Change

162 | Leidy Klotz on Our Resistance to Subtractive Change

There is no general theory of problem-solving, or even a reliable set of principles that will usually work. It's therefore interesting to see how our brains actually go about solving problems. Here's ...

30 Elo 20211h 14min

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