Could the Shape of Your Brain Affect How it Works?
For over a century, researchers have thought that the patterns of brain activity that define our experiences, hopes and dreams are determined by how different brain regions communicate with each other through a complex web of trillions of cellular connections. Now, a study led by from researchers at Monash University’s Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health has examined more than 10,000 different maps of human brain activity and found that the overall shape of a person’s brain exerts a far greater influence on how we think, feel and behave than its intricate neuronal connectivity.
The study, published today in the journal, Nature draws together approaches from physics, neuroscience and psychology to overturn the century-old paradigm emphasising the importance of complex brain connectivity, instead identifying a previously unappreciated relationship between brain shape and activity.
Lead author and Research Fellow Dr James Pang, from the Turner Institute and Monash University’s School of Psychological Sciences, said the findings were significant because they greatly simplified the way that we can study how the brain functions, develops and ages.
Excerpted from Science Daily
