The Raelian Movement
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Brain's Journey from Early Internet to Modern-Day Fiber Optics:
Computer Program Shows How Brain's Complex Fiber Tracks
Maturehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101027092205.htm
ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2010) — The brain's inner network becomes
increasingly more efficient as humans mature. Now, for the first time
without invasive measures, a joint study from the Ecole Polytechnique
Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Lausanne (UNIL), in
collaboration with Harvard Medical School, has verified these gains
with a powerful new computer program.
Reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences early
online edition, the soon-to-be-released software allows for
individualized maps of vital brain connectivity that could aide in
epilepsy and schizophrenia research.
"The computer program brings together a series of processes in a
'pipeline' beginning with individual MRIs and ending with a
personalized map of the fiber optics-like network in the brain. It
takes a whole team of engineers, mathematicians, physicists, and
medical doctors to come up with this type of neurobiological
understanding," explains Jean-Philippe Thiran, an EPFL professor and
head of the Signal Processing Laboratory 5.
A young child's brain is similar to the early Internet with isolated,
poorly linked hubs and inefficient connections, say the researchers
from EPFL and UNIL. An adult brain, on the other hand, is more like a
modern day, fully integrated fiber optic network. The scientists
hypothesized that while the brain does not undergo significant
topographical changes in childhood, its white matter -- the bundles of
nerve cells connecting different parts of the brain -- transitions
from weak and inefficient connections to powerful neuronal highways.
To test their idea, the team worked with colleagues at Harvard Medical
School and Indiana University to map the brains of 30 children between
the ages of two and 18.
With MRI, they tracked the diffusion of water in the brain and, in
turn, the fibers that carry this water. Thiran and UNIL professor
Patric Hagmann, in the Department of Radiology, then created a
database of the various fiber cross-sections and graphed the results.
In the end, they had a 3D model of each brain showing the thousands of
strands that connect different regions.
These individual models provide insight not only into how a child's
brain develops but also into the structural differences in the brain
between left-handed and right-handed people, for example, or between a
control and someone with schizophrenia or epilepsy. The models may
also help inform brain surgeons of where, or where not, to cut to
relieve epilepsy symptoms. Thiran and Hagmann plan to make the tool
available early next year free of charge to hospitals around the
world.
Editor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice,
diagnosis or treatment.
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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