Connectome Book Review by ChristineMM

Title: Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are
Author: Sebastian Seung

Publication: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, February 2012

My Star Rating: 5 stars: I Love It

My Summary Statement: Enthusiastic Book Takes Us Beyond “You Are Your Genes” to “You Are Your Connectome”

Sebastian Seung is a professor of computational neuroscience at MIT and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is working at the cutting edge of neuroscience, working to map the human brain’s connectomes (the connections between the brain cells, simply stated). We have known that genes are important but they are not everything as life experience affects us. Connectomes are the explanation of the what happens in the brain based on the “nurture” in the nature vs. nurture debate.

The book starts out with history: discussing past medical views which sought to explain things attributed to the brain ranging from why a genius has high intelligence to why some people have schizophrenia. Past ideas are explored and what we know today updates the claims (mostly disproving the original notions).

What connectomes are is thoroughly explained over multiple chapters. In general, people have been led to think that what matters is brain growth and new neuron development but Seung explains that the brain is both creating new connections and editing out or paring down unnecessary ones. “Perfection is achieved no when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” (pg. 108). I enjoyed the discussion about learning in the birth to age three range and the notions that exposure to learning to play a musical instrument or to learn a foreign language is best done or completely necessary to tackle in the very early years. Seung explores this in depth and accuses some in the media of over-emphasizing certain aspects of those findings about brain development in the birth to three period (in chapter 7).

I found the section discussing the fact that vision is both about the biology of the eye and the brain’s connectomes working together fascinating. “The brain can recalibrate vision, hearing, and movement to resolve conflicts between them. Eye surgeons have encountered a similar recalibration in patients with strabismus.” (pg 125) “Since experiences like visual stimulation and exposure to language were normally available to all children throughout human history, brain development “expects” to encounter them, and has evolved to rely heavily upon them. On the other hand, experiences like reading books were not available to our ancient ancestors. Brain development could not have evolved to depend upon them. That’s why adults can still learn to read, even if they did not have the opportunity in childhood.” (pg 124) I found these interesting since they speak to challenges some children have with reading, specifically, visual processing disorders. Could these same issues apply to what we now label auditory processing disorders? How does dyslexia fit in here?

The book goes on to discuss technology and how scientists may map the connectomes: a huge project. For me this was the least exciting part of the book. I’m more interested in the general ideas not the discussion of how they’ll get it done. If you want details, it’s there. The point I’ll share is that Seung is optimistic and feels that even though it’s a big challenge it is worthwhile to spend time researching. New technology we have today (computers) are already helping make this possible (which was not available in the past).

Throughout the book in various chapters mental illness is addressed, as are neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism. The section in chapter 13 about the use of drugs to stimulate serotonin production to help patients with depression was interesting. Here is where my question was answered: the drug is not enough, its effects are not immediate, they take several weeks to take effect, Seung says, because what is really happening is the drug (i.e. Prozac) is stimulating a change in the connectome’s actions which then goes on to elevate mood. Finally! Someone explained it! In this area of the book there is discussion of how drugs can help the brain but he acknowledges that the brain is really doing the work. We need to give the brain the credit it is due. It’s the connectomes! We are our connectomes. We are not just genes.

The last two chapters were of little interest to me. They discussed cryogenics and whether it is really possible to bring a dead body and dead brain back to life. The last chapter was quite science fiction-y with philosophy and some religion thrown in; suggesting that brains could be uploaded and we could live in some kind of virtual world. I was just not interested in that kind of pontificating.

I wished the book would have discussed biofeedback and neurofeedback therapy which claims to exercise the brain to create new connectomes or to strengthen weak connectomes. These therapies are being used on everything from ADD to Autism to anxiety to PTSD, addiction, learning disabilities like dyslexia and to help fix brain injury from Lyme Disease, stroke, and concussion. This is an emerging field with published studies, why wasn’t this discussed? How about syntonic phototherapy which stimulates certain centers of the brain? Seung could have also discussed older therapies such as trying to fix visual processing problems by patching one eye and the “vision therapy” exercises done by behavioral optometrists.

I found Seung’s writing style to be just right: not dumbed down so far as to be pabulum yet he explained things well so that a layperson such as myself who has an interest in neuroscience could actually understand it. I felt the book moved along at a good pace and enjoyed the optimistic and enthusiastic tone.

I envision that more will be learned in the next five or ten years and will warrant this book being updated and expanded. Good luck to Seung and all the other scientists working hard to map connectomes, this is promising work. It will be exciting to see what they discover as more research is done.

There are over 280 pages of text and over 50 pages of notes and references.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in neuroscience that wants the most current information and to learn about what is being done with technology today to map the connectomes. This book is fine for laypeople whom really are curious and it of course is appropriate for scientists and health care professionals also.





Disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the Amazon.com Vine program for the purpose of reviewing it on Amazon.com. I was under no obligation to review it favorably or to blog my review. See my blog's full disclosure statement near the top of my blog's sidebar for more info.