Редактирование: Whole brain emulation (раздел)

= Glossary =

In addition to the Glossary of h+ terminology, the following neuroscience glossary is taken from the Mind Uploading Home Page and the WBE Roadmap:

* '''Action Potential''' - A type of neuron output signal which does not lose strength over long distances. Commonly called "nerve impulse", and when an action potential occurs, the neuron is often said to "fire an impulse".
* '''AFM''' - [[Atomic Force Microscope]].
* '''ANN''' - Artificial Neural Network, a mathemtical, abstract model based on biological neural networks.
* '''ATLUM''' - Automatic Tape-Collecting Lathe Utramicrotome.
* '''Autoregulation''' - Regulation of blood flow to maintain the (cerebral) environment.
* '''Axon''' - Projection from a nervcell that conducts signals away from the neuron’s cell body.
* '''Axon''' - A long "branch" of a neuron which carries the output signal (action potential) from the cell. A single axon may be as long as a meter. Contrast dendrite.
* '''Blockface''' - The surface of an imaged sample, especially when cutting takes place.
* '''Bouton''' - The typical synaptic bump that grows between axons and dendrites.
* '''Central Nervous System (CNS)''' - The set of neurons, fibers, and support structures within the skull and spine. Contrast peripheral nervous system.
* '''CNS''' - Central Nervous System
* '''Confocal microscopy''' - Optical imaging technique to image 3D samples by making use of a spatial pinhole.
* '''Connectome''' - The total set of connections between regions or neurons in a brain.
* '''Dendrite''' - A "branch" of a neuron which conducts voltages to transfer information from one part of a cell to another. Dendrites typically serve an input function for the cell, but many dendrites also have output functions. Contrast axon.
* '''Electron Microscopy''' - In general, any form of high-resolution imaging which uses a beam of electrons to probe the sample. Practical resolution for biological samples is about 2 nm, though the theoretical limit is about an order of magnitude higher.
* '''Exaflop''' - 10<sup>18</sup> FLOPS. 
* '''Extracellular''' - Outside the cell.
* '''FIBSEM''' - Focused Ion Beam SEM.
* '''FLOPS''' - Floating-Point Operations Per Second. A measure of computing speed useful in scientific calculations.
* '''Fluorophore ''' - A molecule or part of molecule that causes fluorescence when irradiated by UV light. Used for staining microscope preparations.
* '''FPGA''' - Field‐Programmable Gate Array. Semiconductor device that contains programmable logic and interconnects, allowing the system designer to set up the chip for different purposes.
* '''GABAergic''' - Related to the transmission or reception of GABA, the chief inhibitory neurotransmitter.  
* '''Gap Junction''' - A place where the cell membranes of two cells come in direct contact, allowing electrical potentials to be conducted directly from one to another. Contrast synapse.
* '''GFLOP''' - Gigaflop, a billion FLOPS. 
* '''Glia''' - Cells in nervous system which are not neurons, but serve various support functions (e.g., provide myelin for axons, clean up after cell damage or death, etc.). Some evidence indicates that certain types of glia (esp. astrocytes) may serve information-processing roles as well.
* '''Hypercolumn''' - A group of cortical minicolumns organised into a module with a full set of values for a given set of receptive field parameters.
* '''Interneuron''' - In the CNS, a small locally projecting neuron (unlike neurons that project to long‐range targets) that is not motor or sensory.
* '''Kinase''' - An enzyme that phosphorylates other molecules. 
* '''Ligand''' - A molecule that bonds to another molecule, such as a receptor or enzyme.
* '''Metabolome''' - The complete set of small‐molecule metabolites that can be found in an organism. 
* '''MFLOPS''' - Millions of Floating point Operations Per Second. A measure of computing speed. 
* '''Microtubule''' - A component of the cell skeleton, composed of smaller subunits (Tubulin molecules), which serves as a framework of structural support.
* '''Minicolumn''' - A vertical column through the cerebral cortex; a physiological minicolumn is a collection of about 100 interconnected neurons, a functional minicolumn consists of all neurons that share the same receptive field. 
* '''MIPS''' - Millions of Instructions Per Second. A measure of computing speed.
* '''Motor neuron''' - A neuron involved in generating muscle movement. 
* '''MRI''' - Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
* '''Myelin''' - A fatty substance which surrounds many axons, enabling them to conduct action potentials more quickly.
* '''Neocortex''' - The cerebral cortex, covering the cerebral hemispheres. Neocortex distinguishes it from related but somewhat more “primitive” cortex that have fewer than six layers. 
* '''Neurite''' - A projection from the cell body of a neuron, in particular from a developing neuron where it may become an axon or dendrite.
* '''Neurogenesis''' - The process by which neurons are created from progenitor cells. 
* '''Neuromodulator''' - A substance that affects the signalling behaviour of a neuron. 
* '''Neuromorphic''' - Technology aiming at mimicking neurobiological architectures.
* '''Neuron''' - A cell specialized for processing information. A typical neuron has many input branches (dendrites) and one output branch (axon), though there are many exceptions. The human brain contains roughly 10^12 neurons.
* '''Neuropeptide''' - A neurotransmitter that consists of a peptide (amino acid chain).
* '''Neurotransmitter''' - A chemical that relays, amplifies or modulates signals from neurons to a target cell (such as another neuron).
* '''Parallelization''' - The use of multiple processors to perform large computations faster.
* '''PCR''' - Polymerase Chain Reaction, a technique for amplifying DNA from a small sample.
* '''Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)''' - The set of neurons, nerve fibers and support structures outside the brain and spine. Contrast central nervous system.
* '''Petaflop''' - 10<sup>15</sup> FLOPS.
* '''Phosphorylation''' - Addition of a phosphate group to a protein molecule (or other molecule), usually done by a kinase. This can activate or deactivate the molecule and plays an important role in internal cell signalling.
* '''PNS''' - Peripheral Nervous System.
* '''Potentiation''' - The increase in synaptic response strength seen after repeated stimulation.
* '''SBFSEM''' - Serial Block‐Face Scanning Electron Microscopy.
* '''SEM''' - Scanning Electron Microscopy. 
* '''Sigmoidal''' - S‐shaped, usually denoting a mathematical function that is monotonously increasing, has two horizontal asymptotes and exactly one inflection point.
* '''Skeletonization''' - Image processing method where a shape is reduced to the set of points equidistant from its boundaries, representing its topological structure.
* '''Soma''' - The cell body of a neuron.
* '''Spectromicrosopy''' - Methods of making spectrographic measures of chemical composition in microscopy.
* '''SSET''' - Serial Section Electron Tomography 
* '''SSTEM''' - Serial Section Transmission Electron Microscopy
* '''Supervenience''' - A set of properties A supervenes on a set of properties B if and only if any two objects x and y that share all their B properties must also share all their A properties. Being B‐indiscernible implies being A‐indiscernible.
* '''Synapse''' - A chemically mediated connection between two neurons, so that the state of the one cell affects the state of the other. (In some cases, a cell makes a synapse onto itself.) Synapses typically occur between an axon and a dendrite, though many other arrangements also occur.
* '''Synaptic spine''' - Many synapses have their boutons offset from their parent dendrite through a thinner filament.
* '''TEM''' - Transmission Electron Microscopy.
* '''TFLOPS''' - Teraflops, 10<sup>12</sup> FLOPS.
* '''Tortuosity''' - A measure of how many turns a surface or curve make.
* '''V1''' - The primary visual cortex.
* '''Voxel''' - A volume element, representing a value on a regular grid in 3D space.