LETTERS

摘要

From Chris deSilva, Dianella, Western Australia Caroline Williams reports work on the pattern of links in the brain - the "connectome" - that finds "holes" in the network (25 March, p 28). But I find the work interesting for other reasons. First I should say that the graph theory she describes doesn't care about the arrangement of things in normal space. Like topology, it treats space as stretchy. All that matters in graph theory is.the pattern of connections between nodes. So if there are "holes" in the connectome in the everyday sense of physical space that connections skirt around, they're not interesting to graph theory. It is no surprise that the graphs have loops. What is of interest is which neurons connect or fail to connect, to which.