Map of the Brain

This article can be found at http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/10/11/on_a_quest_to_map_the_brains_hidden_territory/

    It is astounding how much we still do not know about the brain. There are entire sections of the brain that can only be crudely explained and others that remain completely in the dark. As the writer of the story, Carolyn Johnson, so fantastically put it, the images we currently have of the brain are “crude and incomplete, akin to medieval maps of the world in which unexplored regions were filled in with sea monsters or dragons.” This sentence was in the first paragraph of the article, and it certainly grabs the reader’s attention and fascinates him/her right from the start.
   
    The meat of the article does not really come until the third/fourth paragraph. The big idea in this story is that researchers have developed new medical technology to image the brain in more complex ways, and have recently discovered an important structure, called the “connectome," which is an assemblage of "neural highways crucial for brain function, including thoughts, movements, and sensations…[Physicist and radiologist Dr. Van] Weeden said[,] “This is as important a structure as you’re ever going to meet, and this thing had to be designed by evolution.”” Then Johnson jumps to other scientists, discussing their research plans and thoughts on the “connectome,” as well as how important the study of this newly found cerebral region and the new medical technology will be in the future of brain research: Dr. Bruce Rosen says, “There’s excellent evidence we’ll see things we can’t see today.” Johnson really sticks to what the scientists think and say and do. She makes great use of the scientists’ thoughts to frame a story around this new imaging technology, the “connectome,” and why they are so important to our understanding of the brain.