ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY DETAILS about the CONNECTOME Brain Flash Card #9 WHAT IS YOUR CONNECTOME AND WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT? What is the purpose and function of your CONNECTOME? The word "connectome" describes the overall biological structure of the 3-dimensional network that connects your brain to the rest of your body. Its incredible complexity makes possible your brain's plasticity and your adaptability. Your connectome also contains within its newly emerging meaning a more complex description of what historically has been known as simply your brain and nervous system. However, it is now known that the system is so complex that it contains many smaller subsets of connectome circuits. These smaller cranial and spinal connectome circuits can activate the huge number of diverse movements that you are capable of performing. In addition, they have a variety of unique specialized functions, which contribute to the incredible overall coordinated operation of your brain and body. Therefore, the purpose of your overall connectome network and smaller specialized connectome circuits is to make possible your adaptive consciousness and your self-awareness. This gives you the capacity to change your attitudes and behavior (even habits) whenever you are challenged by environmental conditions, whether physical or cultural or social. In addition, the smaller connectome circuits within the overall connectome network, make possible a virtually infinite number of possible connections among your 100 billion neurons that support an unlimited number of physical and mental behaviors. Also your connectome includes all of your 900 trillion synapses, which function as junctions or switches that attach to your 100 billion neurons. This overall communication function makes possible the sending and receiving of ionic currents (biochemical signals or impulses of information) all around your brain and throughout your body. However, the biochemical impulses or signals move in only one direction in each neural pathway. This interactive communication system has two primary sets of neural tracts inside your nervous system known as your central nervous system (CNS), which consists of your brain and spinal cord, and your peripheral nervous system (PNS), which consists of the spinal and cranial nerves that connect your brain and spinal cord to the rest of your body. Your PNS is responsible for the functions of your autonomic nervous system, including the fight, flight, or freeze response to danger (or imagined anxiety and fear) and the relaxation response. Brain scientists think it is important to carve the brain into regions for detailed study: "Neurologists interpret the symptoms of brain damage using Broadmann's map. Every cortical area is associated with a specific mental ability, such as understanding or speaking words, and damage to that area impairs that particular ability." (Connectome, Seung, page 171) "But why is it important to carve the brain more finely, into neuron types? For one thing, neurologists can use such information. It is less relevant for stroke or other injuries, which tend to affect all neurons at a particular location in the brain. Some diseases of the brain, however, affect certain types of neurons while sparing others." (Connectome, Seung, page 171) To review, you have cranial connectomes and neural connectomes, which connect the tens of billions of neurons in your cerebral cortex to the tens of billions of neurons in your spinal cord and the many specialized regions of your brain. In addition, connectomes connect all of your senses and internal organs and all of the neural fibers in the neural pathways inside the nerve tracts of your CNS and PNS, which both connect your brain and body. Thus your many connectomes are part of an incredible parallel processing biochemical system that makes possible your unique free will. Your will power is caused by the ions (isotopes of electrons) that move ("jump") among the layers of neural pathways of your connectome's three-dimensional (3-D) structure. You can think of an electrical "wiring" metaphor with a twist because it is more adaptable than any known industrial or household electrical wiring circuit! Fundamentally, your power to freely choose among alternate behaviors and values is caused by your biological brain tissue and not by abstract historical religious doctrines or modern philosophical and political ideologies! It is important to realize that your ability to change your mind (your will power or "agency" as it is known in philosophy) also depends upon having trillions of healthy synaptic connections in all of the neural pathways inside the nerve tracts of your nervous system as well as all of the connections to the other regions of your brain. In addition, this phenomenal microscopic communication system makes possible the strengthening of new connections in your 900 trillion synapses and your 100 billion neurons, which send biochemical signals up or down in all of your neural pathways. For example, the system can carry millions to billions of neural signals from the neurons in your motor cortex to stimulate the muscles that cause the movements of your body. The system also sends biochemical signals to other functional regions of your brain to stimulate other reactions such as your mirror neurons when you imagine what other people are thinking. For example, in the case of your mirror neurons, it was vital in the context of evolution to be able to predict or imagine whether or not a stranger looked aggressive at a distance so you could be prepared for trouble. Now these same mirror neurons are involved in the experiences of love, empathy, cooperation, and collaboration with anyone who you think deserves having such good feelings shared! It is important to remember that your total connectome network was organized by evolutionary forces through long periods of time so your brain's functional systems can work the way they do today as they continue to adapt to natural environmental conditions. The microscopic functions of the ions, whether polarized, depolorized, or re-polorized in the zillions of molecules of your 100 billion neurons and 900 trillion synapses are now understood well enough by brain scientists to help you every minute of every day! But you must learn how they can work together harmoniously to make you feel better, which will result in increased self-acceptance and self-esteem as you become progressively more successful in achieving career or vocational competence and personal self-actualization. NOTE: See other related brain flash cards: consciousness #1, neurons #2, potentiation #7, synapses #8, plasticity #10, cerebral cortex #11, prefrontal cortex #12, limbic system #13, and working memory #15. INSTANTLY GO TO: FACT CHECKER for CONNECTOME OR RETURN TO: CONNECTOME: BRAIN FLASH CARD #9 OR RETURN TO: LIST OF 15 FREE BRAIN FLASH CARDS