Understanding the Human Brain
<p>Dec 05, 2012 09:26 PM
 
35K  neurosci  exchange info at  Soc for NeuroSci
 
Terry directs Center at Salk.
 
date:  Nov 7 2011   run time is 31 mins....
 
Francis....  put an enormous amt of time into vis pathways..
now called  connectomics...
Terry:  but that will not explain function... will not give you understanding of how it works...
 
eye witness testimony is v unreliable;
begin to understand how and why the brain is suscept to these biases...
 
80% of cortex is white matter... not the 20% that is gray matter... in the cortex...
 
brain is dynamic.. constantly reorganzied... every time u recall a memory from past
u modify it... REconsolidation
 
if there is so much dynamism,  how can there be stability?  how can there be memories
that last a lifetime....
 
its a conundrum....  interviewer asks...  what mechasnism  allows stability...
 
structural memory is prob the longest lasting;
 
Terry's example;   a scar that has lasted for decades...  might be  very long-lasting strucutre
at synapses;
 
can cool someone's brain down  (in coma)  but  when they wake up...  its all there... its back again...
(this interview was during the SfN Meeting in San Diego);
 
Terry is v excited about  getting expt results in HUMANS  (cuz no analogies with monkeys
can do  diffuse tensor imaging to do tract tracing in humans;
EEG/ MEG  (abdondoned in the fifties)  now with ICA and mult-beam forming...  can get
high  time resolution....  can understand traffic..
Tom Lew?  in our  fMRI center.... 50 indep  networks in the brain...
DMN is just one....   
 
now will get a real global picture of traffic...
 
prev:  just one neuron... single units....
 
interviewer  .. how abt Christof Koch
100,000 neurons in a cort column... like an orchestra... shove a telephone pole down (electrode)
 
must be able to record densely... same symphony aorchestra....
must be able to understand the CODE...
 
Q:  optogenetics:  Karl Diesser...  he calls him a psychiatrist... wants to be able to deep it...
do this with DBStim... eg with Parkinson and Depression.  Karl wants to select target
 
Helen Mayberg did depression ...
 
what pic of brain wil they reveal?
 
Terry:  if I had the answer, I wud publish it!!!
 
Terry:  real mysteries of the brain... how do u a unified percept?
integrated world out there... big mystery...   global communic will be key...
want to record from many areas, simult... with comput algos....
what r the signals and algos they do it....
 
final Q:   spoke abt the orchestra...  WHO is conducting the orchestra????
 
Terry:  the conductor can walk off and the symphony will still go on!!!
once u have a well oiled machine with internalized dynamics... prob. get
good music out of it....
 
SfNS  is a good exmaple of conductorless symphony...
 
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