There is an ambitious project underway to map the human brain.
"None of
this will be easy," Obama said in outlining the initiative, dubbed
BRAIN, or Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies.
"But think about what we could do once we do crack this code."
Such a brain
map would be used to develop novel technologies
to produce images showing the brain at work - how, for example, a memory
gets formed, how it is stored and how it is retrieved.
The
scientific hurdles include the fact that there are as many neurons, or
nerve cells, in the human brain-about 100 billion-as there are stars in
the Milky Way. The neurons are linked by about 150 trillion connections
known as synapses.
Some
estimates suggest that if current technology were used, it would take
years to map the roughly 10,000 synapses that branch from just a single
neuron. By comparison, the sequencing of the first human genome involved
the mapping of only three billion base-pair sequences of DNA.
Only 3 billion.
In other words, this isn't rocket science. It's not even genome mapping. No, it's way beyond both of those rudimentary things. Couple that with the fact that once you get the brain 'mapped', you still haven't explained the thoughts. Not the registering of events like a recorder, but the meditations and imaginations of thought. The interactions between brain and soul. The ghost in the machine.
In the mens group this morning, we talked a little about how we know some things now, in part, but in heaven, we'll know in full. Yet even that doesn't begin to encompass all that will be revealed to us over the course of eternity regarding the person of God. Things of which we have no concept, or reference point for, currently.
Things that the intricate workings of the brain only hint at.
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