In the brain, the number of neurons in a network may not matter

A new study indicates that it may be possible to accurately characterize complete neural networks by recording the activity of properly selected samples of 50 neurons or less - an alternative that is much easier to realize. The study was performed by a team of cognitive neuroscientists at Vanderbilt University and reported in a paper published the week of Feb. 3 in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.