The structure of the brain, distinguishable by scanning, was associated with the qualities of a person’s personality

Biologists from the University of Oxford claim that they can most likely determine whether a good person is a bad person, a successful person, or a failure, based solely on the results of a brain scan. The results of the study were published last week in the journal Nature Neuroscience .

This study was one of the first successful work in the framework of the global (and ambitious) project of the Human Connectome Project (HCP). The project was launched by the US National Institute of Health in 2009.

A connection is a complete description of the structure of connections in the nervous system of an organism. The term was proposed in 2005 independently by two researchers, Olaf Spornes and Patrick Hagmann, by analogy with the term “gene”. One hypothesis says that many aspects of the human personality, personality and intellect are embedded in neuronal connections, which is why describing a human connection can be a big step towards understanding many mental processes.



In 2010, Dr. Sebastian Seung, a neuroscientist, made a provocative statement at a conference: "I am my connection." He believes that a person’s personality, his habits, lifestyle, memory and experience are stored in the functional connections of the brain. If you break these ties, then the person is also damaged. To understand this issue, science needs to build detailed maps of the brain - this can help research the principles of our consciousness.

More than 1,200 test adults have already been scanned with fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) in the scope of the HCP project. They were scanned at a time when people were not concentrating on any tasks, and their consciousness was resting. It is believed that it is at this time that the basic connections in the brain can be best considered.

In the course of the study, scientists compared the obtained three-dimensional models of the brain with the personal data of the subjects - from IQ tests and socioeconomic indicators, to life satisfaction according to their own reviews, and cases of violence in the past. They tried to find whether certain configurations of brain connections were somehow related to certain characteristics of people.


How to build a connection

“We get evidence that the work of the brain, the connectedness of its structures and many aspects of human behavior are strongly connected,” says Dr. Stephen Smith, a biomedical engineer and lead author of the work.

Scientists using computer-aided statistical analysis of brain structures and characteristics of people managed to build a simple correlation. It was possible to arrange various types of structures along just one axis, on the one side of which are “good” qualities (good education, better memory, physical abilities), and on the other - “bad” (difficulties in obeying the rules, poor quality of sleep).

On the “positive” side of the axis were those structures in which the connections between the cognitive parts of the brain that work with memory, language and imagination are more pronounced. According to Dr. Markus Reichl[Marcus Raichle], a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, it is surprising that just a simple brain scan in quiet mode is enough to rank a large number of vital qualities along one simple axis.

In fact, it was possible to separate successful people with successful qualities from unsuccessful. True, he notes that from this work it is impossible to conclude how different qualities are related to each other, and whether they are the cause or consequence of a particular brain connection.

In addition, despite the possibility of simple ranking, it is not worth hoping that soon it will be possible to accurately and proactively divide people into “good” and “bad” ones using brain scans. Employment departments should for the time being refrain from buying fMRI devices.

Meanwhile, other studies on the HCP project are ongoing. A Harvard team is exploring how connectivity is changing for aging people. Stephen Smith conducts a study in the UK of brain development in newborns, studying the stages of brain growth before and after birth. In the framework of the project, scientists analyze the genetic data of the subjects in order to understand in what proportions the genetic factors and the influence of the human environment affect the formation of the connection.

The first among living creatures was described by the worm of Caenorhabditis elegans in 1986. His nervous system has only 302 neurons and about 7000 connections. The determination of the nematode worm connectome took more than 12 years.