Abstract
The nervous system is characterized by extremely complex cell-to-cell interactions which primarily occur via chemical synapses. Mapping the structure of these intercellular networks is one of the major challenges in neuroscience. The new field of connectomics which has developed in recent years aims at the dense reconstruction of increasingly comprehensive nerve cell networks. Automated volume electron microscopy techniques are employed for image acquisition. A major obstacle, however, is data reconstruction, for which unusual solutions (e.g., mass reconstruction by crowd sourcing and online computer games) are currently being pursued.
About the author
Born 1978 in Berlin. Starting in 1998, he attended medical school and studied physics at Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Germany, and completed his dissertation with Prof. Dr. Bert Sakmann at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg. From 2006-2011, he was a post doctoral fellow with Prof. Dr. Winfried Denk at the same institution. Since 2011, he has been a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Munich-Martinsried, Germany.
© 2017 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
