Update: View a video of the presentation.
How does the brain's wiring work and how does it influence personality? MIT Computational Neuroscience Professor Sebastian Seung is among the cutting-edge researchers undertaking the monumental task of mapping the brain's connections.
Seung, also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, believes that the biological basis for identity lies in the connectome: the pattern of connections between the brain's neurons, which change slowly over time as people learn and grow. This, he says, is where genetic inheritance intersects with life experience.
Seung will offer his thoughts and take questions from the worldwide MIT alumni community via video chat on Wednesday, April 4, from Noon to 12:30 p.m. ET.
Register for this free event—Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are—to receive the link for live viewing. After the event, come back here and continue the conversation in the comments.
About Sebastian Seung
Sebastian Seung is professor of computational neuroscience and of physics at MIT and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He studied theoretical physics with David Nelson at Harvard University and completed postdoctoral training with Haim Sompolinsky at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.His lab has recently launched EyeWire, an online community that empowers the public to map the retinal connectome by playing a game of coloring nanoscale images.
Before joining the MIT faculty, he was a member of the Theoretical Physics Department at Bell Laboratories. He is also external member of the Max Planck Society, and has been a Packard Fellow, Sloan Fellow, McKnight Scholar, and PopTech Science Fellow.
