#27 Jeff Lichtman - Mapping Human Brain at Nanometer Resolution

What can we learn about the brain if we map it at a nanometer resolution?

This is what I discuss with Jeff Lichtman, who is a Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University.

The holy grail of brain science is to understand the human brain and towards that Jeff Litchman and his collaborators recently finished a project where they mapped 1 mm cubed of human brain tissue using an electron microscope at a nanometer resolution. The project revealed a goldmine of 1.6 petabytes worth of data, which is sufficient to fill more than 3000 laptop hard drives. And, mind you, it’s just 1 mm3 of the human brain which is 0.0001% of the entire brain. The human brain is truly staggering in its richness and complexity.

== What we talk about ==
0:00 - Introduction
2:42 - What motivated you to study the mapping of the human brain?
7:07 - Why does evolution have a different strategy for humans in comparison to other species?
11:02 - The connections within our brain and their pruning
15:24 - What makes the cortex special? Is the human cortex different from other species?
19:45 - Why aren't the species, which have bigger brains than humans, as intelligent and adaptive?
23:28 - What are glial cells and what's their function?
28:04 - Do the glial cells play any role in the comparatively higher intelligence in humans?
31:11 - Our neurons are selfish
33:49 - The structure of the human cortex
40:38 - What can the AI-enthusiasts learn from our cortex?
44:27 - More about your study on mapping the brain and the reason you chose to do it
51:27 - Highlights from your study
1:01:43 - How do neurons know which other neurons to communicate with?
1:07:00 - Why do we study rodent’s brains even when they are nowhere close to the human brain?
1:10:39 - How soon will we be able to finish mapping the entire brain?