Including a chapter by 2014 Nobel laureates May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser An unprecedented look at the quest to unravel the mysteries of the human brain, The Future of the Brain takes readers to the absolute frontiers of science. Original essays by leading researchers such as Christof Koch, George Church, Olaf Sporns, and May-Britt and Edvard Moser describe the spectacular technological advances that will enable us to map the more than eighty-five billion neurons in the brain, as well as the challenges that lie ahead in understanding the anticipated deluge of data and the prospects for building working simulations of the human brain. A must-read for anyone trying to understand ambitious new research programs such as the Obama administration's BRAIN Initiative and the European Union's Human Brain Project, The Future of the Brain sheds light on the breathtaking implications of brain science for medicine, psychiatry, and even human consciousness itself. Contributors include: Misha Ahrens, Ned Block, Matteo Carandini, George Church, John Donoghue, Chris Eliasmith, Simon Fisher, Mike Hawrylycz, Sean Hill, Christof Koch, Leah Krubitzer, Michel Maharbiz, Kevin Mitchell, Edvard Moser, May-Britt Moser, David Poeppel, Krishna Shenoy, Olaf Sporns, Anthony Zador.
List of Contributors ix Preface Gary Marcus and Jeremy Freeman xi MAPPING THE BRAIN Building Atlases of the Brain 3 Mike Hawrylycz with Chinh Dang, Christof Koch, and Hongkui Zeng Whole Brain Neuroimaging and Virtual Reality 17 Misha B. Ahrens Project MindScope 25 Christof Koch with Clay Reid, Hongkui Zeng, Stefan Mihalas, Mike Hawrylycz, John Philips, Chinh Dang, and Allan Jones The Connectome as a DNA Sequencing Problem 40 Anthony Zador Rosetta Brain 50 George Church with Adam Marblestone and Reza Kalhor COMPUTATION Understanding the Cortex through Grid Cells 67 May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser Recording from Many Neurons Simultaneously: From Measurement to Meaning 78 Krishna V. Shenoy Network Neuroscience 90 Olaf Sporns Large-Scale Neuroscience: From Analytics to Insight 100 Jeremy Freeman SIMULATING THE BRAIN Whole Brain Simulation 111 Sean Hill Building a Behaving Brain 125 Chris Eliasmith LANGUAGE The Neurobiology of Language 139 David Poeppel Translating the Genome in Human Neuroscience 149 Simon E. Fisher Color plates follow p. 160 SKEPTICS Consciousness, Big Science, and Conceptual Clarity 161 Ned Block From Circuits to Behavior: A Bridge Too Far? 177 Matteo Carandini Lessons from Evolution 186 Leah Krubitzer Lessons from the Genome 194 Arthur Caplan with Nathan Kunzler The Computational Brain 205 Gary Marcus IMPLICATIONS Neurotechnology 219 John Donoghue The Miswired Brain, Genes, and Mental Illness 234 Kevin J. Mitchell Neural Dust: An Untethered Approach to Chronic Brain-Machine Interfaces 243 Michel M. Maharbiz with Dongjin Seo, Jose M. Carmena, Jan M. Rabaey, and Elad Alon AFTERWORD Neuroscience in 2064: A Look at the Last Century 255 Christof Koch and Gary Marcus Glossary 271 Index 275
