
Brain scans reveal simple 3D grid structure  - signifiers
http://www.nih.gov/news/health/mar2012/nimh-29.htm
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wladimir
Very intersting find. Though every time I see 'simple 3D grid' in combination
with the brain, I think 'scanner or reconstruction artifact'. For my PhD
research I've worked with DTI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging) data which was very
hard to sensibly interpret as 'connectivity': The visualized structures
depended very much on the parameters and reconstruction method used. And it
was hard to match the visualized structures to actual physical structures.

I wonder if they verified in some other way (ie, microscope) that the simple
3D structures were really there. If so, very exciting news!

~~~
glimcat
MRI is mathematical voodoo even when it's working - it's easy to fool yourself
at any of several stages in the process. "New scanner gives 10x improvement in
detail, shows amazing and unexpectedly simple result" is just screaming for
verification.

But it needs it obviously enough and the claim is interesting enough that
further verification (or falsification) should happen soonish, as research
timescales go.

~~~
bugsbunnyak
In fact, this group has already done very detailed validation in cat brains:
in-vivo MR imaging followed by ex-vivo staining+microscopy for validation :

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2789885/>

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JabavuAdams
Suggest changing the title to: "Imager Reveals Grid-Like Brain Connections
Simpler Than Previously Believed."

~~~
alanfalcon
Or, adapting the subtitle: Brain scans reveal simple 3D grid structure

Agree that the current editorialized HN title (Beautiful math: Human brain
Connectome project) is nonsensical. The word "math" doesn't appear in the
article at all, for example.

~~~
signifiers
The particular finding in the article is just the most recent insight from
next generation DSI computational modeling breakthroughs. The article
highlights the hardware/device engineering, but the real news is that by using
these new modeling techniques, nearly _all_ modern MRI scanners can benefit,
largely unmodified.

As someone who works at the intersection of informatics & device engineering,
I find these visualizations stunning.

And the embedded video in the article is not just eye candy, it actually
represents a class of diagnostic tools that didn't exist a couple of years
ago.

Guilty as charged on a modest bit of editorializing; just google DSI or its
related cousin Diffusion Tensor Imaging and tell me that's not pretty cool.

As for "no math" mentioned in the article, that is true. But a cursory search
for the terms tensor or fractional anisotropy and weighted trajectory
projection models will quickly reveal just how much math is involved,
regardless of a press release that glosses over that fact.

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casca
For a good introduction to the Connectome project, this is excellent:
<http://www.thersa.org/events/video/vision-videos/connectome>

~~~
taligent
And the "game" that came from it: <https://eyewire.org>

Would be cool if someone from like Zynga or other gaming company could
actually help expand this to the general public.

~~~
Someone
They could start helping themselves by making it easier/possible people to
figure out what it is all about without signing up or in.

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tfm
The limited connectivity is very interesting -- my experience with artificial
neural nets is pretty limited, but are there many well-studied ANN models that
have a similar structure to this? The spatial restrictions are so simple that
it seems like they'd lend themselves to efficient implementation.

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bugsbunnyak
Original article:

<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6076/1628.abstract> [paywall]

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stcredzero
Someone should start a project to document all of the mechanisms in cells
somewhat resembling machine phase nanotech and call it the Cellular
Doohickeyome Project. (Or is it just me, but aren't there an awful lot of
-omes now?)

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marvin
Does anyone know the resolution of this scan? Are there many complicated
structures that are smaller than this apparent grid, or are we getting close
to seeing "live" images of a fully wired, working brain?

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ilaksh
I think that we are really starting to be able to model a lot of the details
of the human brain and that is very exciting.

<https://vimeo.com/23225093>

