This article was taken from the June 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This is your brain, captured in colour. The luminous shapes are a computer simulation of pyramidal neurons -- cells found in your cerebral cortex which play a critical role in memory recall, sensation and movement. "The shape of a neuron is like a signature of its particular neuronal type," says Michael Hausser, director of the neural computation lab at the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research at UCL.
The shape of the neurons can be simulated by an algorithm: the three variables are the density of the dendrites (the branches); the energy needed to produce dendrites; and the time it takes for an electric signal to pass along a dendrite. "People have been trying to generate synthetic morphologies for years," says Hausser. "Ours is probably the closest approximation yet. Our algorithm can help groups who are trying to build whole brains to populate their networks with realistic neurons."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
