MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung believes mapping of of the human brain’s 100 billion neurons can be done — one cubic millimeter of brain tissue at a time.

Even more than our genome, our connectome shapes who we are, says Seung, who outlines his vision for connectome research in a new book, Connectome. “Clearly genes are very important, but because they don’t change after the moment of conception, they can’t really account for the effects of experience,” he says