Connectome Quotes

“Pascal meditated upon outer space, but we need only turn our thoughts inward to feel his dread. Inside every one of our skulls lies an organ so vast in its complexity that it might as well be infinite.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“Actually I’m a professor because I know how much I don’t know.” Studying an object as complex as the brain may seem almost futile. The brain’s billions of neurons resemble trees of many species and come in many fantastic shapes. Only the most determined explorers”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“...due neuroni sono connessi se esiste una piccola giunzione, la sinapsi, nel punto in cui due neuroni si toccano. Ed è attraverso la sinapsi che un neurone invia i messaggi a un altro neurone.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connettoma

“Frastornato e sentendosi piccolo in confronto a questi pensieri, Pascal confessava che «l’eterno silenzio di quegli spazi infiniti» lo sgomentava. Le sue riflessioni erano rivolte allo spazio, eppure basta dirigere i nostri pensieri dentro di noi per provare lo stesso timore. Nella testa di ciascuno alberga un organo così vasto e complesso che potrebbe essere infinito.”
― sebastian seung, Connettoma

“A dead brain, its molecules fastened in place by embalming fluid, is a monument to the thoughts and feelings that once lived inside.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“With the aid of machine intelligence, we will finally see the connectomes that have eluded us for so long.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“You are the activity of your neurons.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“brain, we do know that with it he was performing feats of genius while millions of his fellow countrymen, with brains 25 percent or even 50 percent larger, were manifesting the average abilities of daily labourers.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“learn what changes in the connectome are required for us to make the behavioral changes we hope for, and then we must develop the means to bring these changes about. If we succeed, neuroscience will play a profound role in the effort to cure mental disorders, heal brain injuries, and improve ourselves.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“Unlike your genome, which is fixed from the moment of conception, your connectome changes throughout life. Neuroscientists have already identified the basic kinds of change. Neurons adjust, or “reweight,” their connections by strengthening or weakening them.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“The reason is simple: Genes alone cannot explain how your brain got to be the way it is.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“Figure 4 shows an excerpt from the three billion letters, which would be a million pages long if printed as a book.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“The individual links of the chain are small molecules called nucleotides, which come in four types denoted by the letters A, C, G, and T. Your genome is the entire sequence of nucleotides in your DNA, or equivalently a long string of letters drawn from this four-letter”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“No road, no trail can penetrate this forest. The long and delicate branches of its trees lie everywhere, choking space with their exuberant growth.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“The function of a neuron is defined chiefly by its connections with other neurons. This mantra defines a doctrine I’ll call connectionism.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

“None of the parts in a computer is by itself capable of playing chess—but a huge number of these parts, when organized in the right way, can collectively defeat the world champion.”
― Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are