Reverse Engineering the Brain With a Circuit Diagram Based on a Segmented Connectome and System Dynamics

Contents

New connection and activity imaging methods can map most cortical areas, their specialization, control structures and functional links. This will provide a “target circuit diagram” of a the human brain. This technology can map the likely 200+ brain areas and 30,000+ fiber tracks, identifying their location, boundaries, volume of tissue, connective topology, causal links, and core functions. The qualitative pattern of the connection structure suggests three critical functions with qualitatively different connective topologies. The brain appears to be organized into three functional subsystems involving specific representation areas (RAs; e.g., vision, audition, tactile, motor), a domain general Cognitive Control Network (CCN; e.g., attention, decision, task sequencing, affect/arousal), and priority field maps (PFM; e.g., salience, activity, affect). Each system has qualitatively different anatomical connective topology. The synergy of a serial CCN and parallel representation system provides computational advantage over current symbolic or parallel association based computation.