What is the point of Eyewire?

What is the point of Eyewire?

Launched in 2012, EyeWire is a game that uses crowdsourcing to help map the brain. Anyone can play and players need no scientific background. They need only be curious and enjoy solving puzzles. The game is based on mapping the retina — a part of the eye, but also part of the central nervous system.

What does the connectome do?

The connectome is the complete description of the structural connectivity (the physical wiring) of an organism’s nervous system. The field of science dealing with the assembly, mapping and analysis of data on neural connections is called connectomics.

What happens when neurons rewire?

Rewiring reconfigures the structure of neural circuits. As a result, an immediate effect of rewiring is that it alters the neural activity within those circuits. However, the brain has multiple mechanisms for altering neural activity over the short and longer terms.

What is a brain connectome?

A connectome (/kəˈnɛktoʊm/) is a comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain, and may be thought of as its “wiring diagram”. A connectome is constructed by tracing the neuron in a nervous system and mapping where neurons are connected through synapses.

Why do we have connectomes in our brain?

There is an even more remarkable reason to construct human connectomes. Many neuroscientists today believe that memories are stored primarily in the synapses between neurons, and to a more limited degree in nuclear changes in the cell bodies of each neuron.

Which is the best description of a connectome?

What is a Connectome? A connectome* is the complete map of the neural connections in a brain. It is sometimes referred to as a “wiring diagram” of the molecular connections between neurons, trading on the analogy of a brain to an electronic device, where axons and dendrites are wires and neuron bodies are components.

Is it possible to build a complete human connectome?

Building a complete human connectome is inconceivable with existing technology, for two reasons.

Which is the complete map of neural connections in the brain?

A connectome* is the complete map of the neural connections in a brain. It is sometimes referred to as a “wiring diagram” of the molecular connections between neurons, trading on the analogy of a brain to an electronic device, where axons and dendrites are wires and neuron bodies are components.