Lecturer at RIT Discusses the 'Brain and Who We Are'
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The Rochester Institute of Technology hosted its Visionaries in Motion series Thursday night.
The lecture, by Sebastian Seung, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focused on how close researchers are to uncovering and understanding the connection between the brain and who we are.
As a professor of neuroscience and physics, Seung is currently mapping out a new model of the brain that focuses on the connections between each neuron that he calls our connectomes.
Seung says there are still many challenges to understanding the brain.
“Mental disorders are a huge problem in our society. They're very costly if you want to look at it from the economic viewpoint and they cause a lot of human pain. Our therapies for mental disorders, like various drugs we have, they were originally discovered by chance, just dumb luck, and sometimes maybe followed up with some good detective work. But in the future, people are optimistic that a fundamental understanding of neuroscience will give us rational ways at looking at new therapies for mental disorders,” said Sebastian Seung.
New interdisciplinary research into the neurology, neuro-anatomy, and various contexts of brain science is featured in Seung's new book, The Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are.