Sebastian Seung is mapping a massively ambitious new model of the brain that
focuses on the connections between each neuron. He calls it our “connectome,”
and it’s as individual as our genome — and understanding it could open a new
way to understand our brains and our minds.
[Jump ahead 2 minutes.]
SmartPlanet.com reports on a Wall Street Journal report research by German biologist Anna Katharina Braun and others.
"Braun focuses on degus, small rodents tied to guinea pigs and chinchillas. The mother and father raise the degus in nature.
The Journal’s money quote:
When deprived of their father, the degu pups exhibit both short- and long-term changes in nerve-cell growth in different regions of the brain. Dr. Braun, director of the Institute of Biology at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, and her colleagues are also looking at how these physical changes affect offspring behavior.
Bottom line: Degu pups without fathers are more aggressive and impulsive than others with two parents."
