The Brain Activity Map Project and the Challenge of Functional Connectomics

Alivisatos, AP. Chun, M. Church, GM. Greenspan, RJ. Roukes, ML. Yuste, R. (2012) The Brain Activity Map Project and the Challenge of Functional Connectomics. Neuron 74:970-974.

Brain Activity Map Project (BAM) is aimed at reconstructing the full record of neural activity across complete neural circuits. The general idea is to crack the emergent properties of the neural circuits. I like their opening quote:

‘‘The behavior of large and complex

aggregates of elementary

particles, it turns out, is not to be

understood in terms of a simple

extrapolation of the properties of a

few particles. Instead, at each level

of complexity entirely new properties

appear.’’ –More Is Different,

P.W. Anderson

Record every action potential from every neuron within a circuit. Need better voltage dyes, better multi-electrode recordings (3-dimensional probes), use wireless electrodes. 

So just a call for this progress. I was thinking that this applies nicely to my voltage-dye studies of the leech. We are probably closer than anyone to actually imaging the activity of an entire neural circuit during behaviorally relevant states. This type of mapping project fits nicely into how I'm thinking of telling the VSD story for my thesis.