In March the American government is expected to launch an attempt to solve biology's most mysterious problem: how the brain works.The Brain Activity Map, as this project seems likely to be called, will study how the brain is wired up at all levels, from the connections between individual nerve cells to the neuronal superhighways between its various lobes and ganglia.
But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.
Every working day a vast ganglia of 45 bullet, main and suburban-overground lines, with another 13 underground, channels 4.1m swipecard-carrying commuters into Tokyo's central wards alone, with clean and exceptional precision.
Many of her papers she illustrated herself (delighting to draw the haloes of nerve fibres growing out in orderly confidence from the ganglia of chicks); she made her own clothes and designed her own jewellery.
Brain-bots are fairly new technology, but they have great potential for the future of bio-research," says Dr Prescott.A robot controlled by a simulated basal ganglia is one thing, but researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta have gone a step further.
The basal ganglia are part of the brain that helps people to decide what to do next what researchers call "action selection".In the future, robots with simulated brain circuits might help us to identify and simulate new forms of treatment for damaged brains.The brain-bot simulates the level of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that controls movement and emotional response) in the basal ganglia.
It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what.
The job of these ganglia is to co-ordinate movement and thinking.
Like Dr Mühlau, Dr Nopoulos has found a correlation between repeat numbers and the volume of the basal ganglia.
These researchers found a correlation between the number of a volunteer's CAG repeats and the volume of the grey matter (in other words, nerve cells) in his or her basal ganglia.
Locomotion is controlled by both ganglia.
