I am my connectome – aren’t I?

The connectome simply put is the wiring diagram of your brain. But this is not so simple to obtain due the incredible complexity of the human brain.

I wrote previously in the last couple weeks of new research that indicates that one human brain has more ‘switches’ than all the computers in the world.

Work from researchers involved in this finding is featured in a TED talk from the summer of 2010 (h/t   brainposts ). Sebastian Seung is the presenter, and he presents some incredible visuals.

key fact: Our brain has a million times more connections than your genome has letters. Think about this the human genome has 3 billion base pairs, which would suggest that the human brain has 3 trillion connections.

The last 10 years might have been the decade of genome is the next one destined to be the decade of the connectome.

But the most philosophical interesting point of the video is when Sebastian talks about how our experiences changes our connectome, our wiring. Thinking could potentially change our brain wiring.

Do you think you are your connectome ? And if not what are you ?

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