Small World of Your Brain

"Inspired by the same mathematics behind "six degrees of Kevin Bacon," neuroscientists are creating models of how the human brain work. In this "small world" architecture of the brain, clusters of cells link to their nearest neighbors with some neurons connecting to distant clusters. It's the same phenomenon that social networking pioneer Duncan Watts of NYU and Steven Strogatz of Cornell previously showed emerges in the electric-power grid, relationships between professional actors, and the brain cells of worms. According to Strogatz and Watts, this kind of small world structure boosts the power and efficiency of the system. Often, the networks behave chaotically. " /boingboing/