Could any two people on earth be linked by a chain of no more than six acquaintances? Social psychology and network science have allowed this seemingly fallible claim to linger in the popular imagination for almost a century. It has achieved some familiarity through John Guare’s play Six Degrees of Separation (1990) as well as through several books. On top of being an incredibly interesting … Continue reading The psychology of ‘six degrees’: Inside the Watts-Strogatz model

As neuroscientists’ interest in brain functionality and mental disorders has grown, so too has the demand for more precise neural mapping techniques. With more than 80 billion neurons and trillion connections, the creation of a “connectome” – or wiring diagram – for the human brain remains an unfathomably complex task. This complexity has, until recently, hindered researchers’ ability to link brain structure with function in … Continue reading Mapping Consciousness: Flywire’s Brain Connectome and its Promise for the Future of Neuroscience