Latest research on physics of the brain to be presented at 2020 APS March Meeting

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Reviewed by Kate Anderton, B.Sc. (Editor) Feb 28 2020 Understanding the brain has been one of science's greatest challenges. Each discovery only seems to raise countless other questions about the inner workings of this incredibly complex organ. Brain research brings together disciplines like neuroscience, medicine, biochemistry, and even physics. At the 2020 American Physical Society March Meeting in Denver, scientists will present their latest research on the physics of the brain. Mapping the mammalian connectome University of Notre Dame researcher Zoltan Toroczkai will describe his work on mapping the physical connections between different areas of the brain. In particular, he is interested in which brain networks have been evolutionarily conserved across mammalian species, including our own. Our goal is to understand how the brain works, and for this, we need to understand how the brain is connected. With this connectivity data, we want to look for any regularity in how the brain is wired." Zoltan Toroczkai, professor of physics, computer science, and engineering, University of Notre Dame Despite huge variations in the brain sizes of mammals, he and his collaborators have discovered that the organization of the brain follows a principle called the Exponential Distance Rule. It states that the wiring probability between two cortical areas decreases exponentially the further away they get from one another. Shaping the little brain Despite its small size, the human cerebellum--Latin for "little brain"--contains more neurons than the rest of the brain. It manages our body's muscle coordination and sense of balance. Like the cerebrum, it has two hemispheres, lobes that branch into smaller lobes, and intricate surface folds that form during the early stages of growth. Related Stories