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Annual Review of Neuroscience

Volume 39, 2016

From Cajal to Connectome and Beyond

Abstract

One goal of systems neuroscience is a structure-function model of nervous system organization that would allow mechanistic linking of mind, brain, and behavior. A necessary but not sufficient foundation is a connectome, a complete matrix of structural connections between the nodes of a nervous system. Connections between two nodes can be described at four nested levels of analysis: macroconnections between gray matter regions, mesoconnections between neuron types, microconnections between individual neurons, and nanoconnections at synapses. A long history of attempts to understand how the brain operates as a system began at the macrolevel in the fifth century, was revolutionized at the meso- and microlevels by Cajal and others in the late nineteenth century, and reached the nanolevel in the mid-twentieth century with the advent of electron microscopy. The greatest challenge today is extracting knowledge and understanding of nervous system structure-function architecture from vast amounts of data.

Keyword(s): big data, nervous system, network analysis, neural connections
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2016-07-08
2024-07-04
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/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071714-033954
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From Cajal to Connectome and Beyond
Annual Review of Neuroscience 39, 197 (2016); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071714-033954
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071714-033954
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071714-033954
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