When was the last time you saw your brain? (That may change soon)

Fly­ing Through Inner Space (Nation­al Geographic):

“It’s hard to tru­ly see the brain. I don’t mean to sim­ply see a three-pound hunk of tis­sue. I mean to see it in a way that offers a deep feel for how it works. That’s not sur­pris­ing, giv­en that the human brain is made up of over 80 bil­lion neu­rons, each branch­ing out to form thou­sands of con­nec­tions to oth­er neurons…a num­ber of neu­ro­sci­en­tists are chart­ing the brain now in ways that were impos­si­ble just a few years ago. And out of these sur­veys, an inter­est­ing new way to look at the brain is emerg­ing. Call it the brain fly-through. The brain fly-through only became fea­si­ble once sci­en­tists start­ed mak­ing large-scale maps of actu­al neu­rons in actu­al brains. Once they had those co-ordi­nates in three-dimen­sion­al space, they could pro­gram a com­put­er to glide through it. The results are strange­ly hypnotic…Imagine, if you will, putting on an EEG cap and look­ing at a screen show­ing you what’s hap­pen­ing in your brain at the moment you’re look­ing at it. That’s what this sys­tem promises.”

Relat­ed articles:

• Brain health par­a­digm shift: from one-time screen­ings to reg­u­lar cog­ni­tive assessments
• Retool­ing Brain Care With Low-Cost, Data-Dri­ven Technologies