Recent advances in network science have greatly increased our
understanding of many complex networked systems, ranging from
transportation networks, to social networks, the internet, ecosystems,
and biochemical and gene transcription pathways. Network approaches are
also increasingly applied in the context of neuroscience, at several
levels of scale from cells to circuits and large-scale systems.A broad
range of empirical strategies aim at creating comprehensive maps of
the brain’s connections, the connectome. Initial results obtained from
the first connectome maps of the human brain reveal a number of
characteristic topological features, including small-world attributes,
modularity and hubs, and a pronounced core and rich-club
organization.Dr. Sporns will review how recent network studies have
given us new insights into the brain’s connection topology, and how
these studies provide new insight into the relationship between
structure and functional dynamics.