Illustration by Mark Ross Studios26 Scientific American, July 2019how
matter
becomes
mınd
The new discipline of network neuroscience
yields a picture of how mental activity arises
from carefully orchestrated interactions
among different brain areas
By Max Bertolero and Danielle S. Bassett
NEUROSCIENCEN
etworks pervade our lives. every day we use intricate networks of
roads, railways, maritime routes and skyways traversed by commer-
cial flights. They exist even beyond our immediate experience. Think
of the World Wide Web, the power grid and the universe, of which
the Milky Way is an infinitesimal node in a seemingly boundless net-
work of galaxies. Few such systems of interacting connections, how-
ever, match the complexity of the one underneath our skull.