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Your Brain Is Wired Reveals the Real You ­ Scientific American

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How Your Brain Is Wired Reveals the      

Real You
The Human Connectome Project finds surprising correlations between brain architecture and
behavior

By Sara Reardon and Nature magazine  |  September 28, 2015
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The brain’s wiring patterns can shed light
on a person’s positive and negative traits,
researchers report in Nature Neuroscience.
The finding, published on September 28, is
the first from the Human Connectome
Project (HCP), an international effort
to map active connections between neurons
in different parts of the brain.

The HCP, which launched in 2010 at a cost
of US$40 million, seeks to scan the brain
networks, or connectomes, of 1,200 adults.
Among its goals is to chart the networks
that are active when the brain is idle; these
©iStock.com
are thought to keep the different parts of the
brain connected in case they need to
perform a task.

In April, a branch of the project led by one of the HCP's co­chairs, biomedical engineer
Stephen Smith at the University of Oxford, UK, released a database of resting­state
connectomes from about 460 people between 22 and 35 years old. Each brain scan is
supplemented by information on approximately 280 traits, such as the person's age,
whether they have a history of drug use, their socioeconomic status and personality
traits, and their performance on various intelligence tests.

Axis of connectivity
Smith and his colleagues ran a massive computer analysis to look at how these traits
varied among the volunteers, and how the traits correlated with different brain
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9/30/2015 How Your Brain Is Wired Reveals the Real You ­ Scientific American

connectivity patterns. The team was surprised to find a single, stark difference in the
way brains were connected. People with more 'positive' variables, such as more
Most Popular
education, better physical endurance and above­average performance on memory
tests, shared the same patterns. Their brains seemed to be more strongly connected Sunday's "Supermoon"
than those of people with 'negative' traits such as smoking, aggressive behaviour or a Total Lunar Eclipse: When
and Where to See It
family history of alcohol abuse.

Marcus Raichle, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, is What Edward Snowden Got
impressed that the activity and anatomy of the brains alone were enough to reveal this Wrong about
Eavesdropping on Aliens
'positive­negative' axis. “You can distinguish people with successful traits and
successful lives versus those who are not so successful,” he says.

Searching for Life in
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How Your Brain Is Wired
But Raichle says that it is impossible to determine from this study how different traits Reveals the Real You
relate to one another and whether the weakened brain connections are the cause or
effect of negative traits. And although the patterns are clear across the large group of
HCP volunteers, it might be some time before these connectivity patterns could be
Why the Human Brain
used to predict risks and traits in a given individual. Deanna Barch, a psychologist at Project Went Wrong­­and
Washington University who co­authored the latest study, says that once these causal How to Fix It

relationships are better understood, it might be possible to push brains toward the
'good' end of the axis.

Van Wedeen, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that
the findings could help to prioritize future research. For instance, one of the negative Solve Innovation Challenges
traits that pulled a brain farthest down the negative axis was marijuana use in recent The SUDEP Institute Challenge: Preventing
Epilepsy Seizures
weeks. Wedeen says that the finding emphasizes the importance of projects such as Deadline: Oct 13 2015
one launched by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse last week, which will follow Reward: $30,000 USD

10,000 adolescents for 10 years to determine how marijuana and other drugs affect Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is the

their brains. leading cause of death in young adults who have
epilepsy and poorly controlled seizur

Wedeen finds it interesting that the wiring patterns associated with people's general Portable Roof Damage Detection
intelligence scores were not exactly the same as the patterns for individual measures
of cognition—people with good hand–eye coordination, for instance, fell farther down Deadline: Nov 10 2015
the negative axis than did those with good verbal memory. This suggests that the Reward: $75,000 USD
The Seeker desires a technology that can detect seen
biology underlying cognition might be more complex than our current definition of and unseen anomalies, such as hail damage, on
asphalt shingle roofs. The technology
general intelligence, and that it could be influenced by demographic and behavioural
factors. “Maybe it will cause us to reconsider what [the test for general intelligence] is More Challenges »

measuring,” he says. “We have a new mystery now.” Powered By:

Much more connectome data should emerge in the next few years. The Harvard Aging
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Brain Study, for instance, is measuring active brain connections in 284 people aged
between 65 and 90, and released its first data earlier this year. And Smith is running
the Developing Human Connectome Project in the United Kingdom, which is imaging
the brains of 1,200 babies before and after birth. He expects to release its first data in
the next few months. Meanwhile, the HCP is analysing genetic data from its
participants, which include a large number of identical and fraternal twins, to
determine how genetic and environmental factors relate to brain connectivity Latest from SA Blog Network
patterns.
Why Do Narcissists Lose Popularity Over Time?

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9/30/2015 How Your Brain Is Wired Reveals the Real You ­ Scientific American

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