Our findings suggest that 'global efficiency of communication' among brain regions is under genetic control (h2 lambda=42%), irrespectively of the total number of brain connections (connectivity density).
Psychiatrists and neurobiologists have observed biochemical changes and alterations in brain connections in patients with schizophrenia.
Teasing out how sleep affects brain connections could do more than answer why we snooze so much.
The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.
Since that first meeting, Hart's team has recruited more than fifty former N.F.L. players for an ongoing study tracking their brain connections and mental health.
Until we have direct brain connections to the internet, it is still far more laborious to look everything up about a topic one wants to think about.
It concluded: "Brain connections serve as the building blocks of a child's future, defining their health, emotional well-being and ability to learn.
Increasing sleep time from six hours or less to eight hours promotes the growth of the brain connections that increase memory up to 25% and restore emotional calm, alert reflectiveness and job efficiency.
If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you're not going to wrestle with your established brain connections".
The scientists took three differently-coloured signals, blue, green and yellow, and painstakingly applied them to different brain connections in the fly's most prominent sensory systems - its sense of smell, sight, and heat.
"It appears that various growth factors must be carried from the periphery of the body into the brain to start a molecular cascade there," creating new neurons and brain connections, says Henriette van Praag, an investigator in the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging.
