How Gamers are Mapping the Brain

Amy Sterling is the Executive Director of EyeWire, the virtual reality game that is designed to help researchers map the brain. Amy crowdsources video-game players by having them join hundreds of thousands of other participants around the world in playing EyeWire to solve challenging 3D puzzles, and in the process, players produce data of their neural activity. This data is used by neuroscientists to chart synaptic connections and model circuitry in 3D maps, yielding important visual results not possible through artificial algorithms or normal computers.