Harvard scientists are now trying to map the brain on a neuron level resolution. They hope to use the ‘wiring diagram’, a map of every single neuron and its connections to understand processes of how neurons connect to neighbours, how they select which connections to cut and how the brain works in general.

The story in Wired explains that the researchers are working on mice brain only, because storing the data of a human brain would need “hundreds of petabytes of information, or about the total amount of storage in Google’s data centers“. Additionally, the work required to map the brain is immense, they’ve already built a brain-slicing and photographing robot (shown above).

While a full map of all neurons in a brain might lead to some new insights, for example more accurate clustering of brain regions and statistical data about synapse connections, I very much doubt that this will lead to understanding how the brain works on a bigger scale: Intelligence, Consciousness or just why this big lump of neurons keeps us alive at all are very hard to answer with just a map of connections between cells.

It is like looking at a movie-file with a hex-editor and trying to understand what the plot is. We are still a long way from understanding the brain, it is not likely that artificial intelligence can be derived from this human intelligence analysis: Panic Level adjusted by -0.5%.

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