[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14069-14070]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                NOTEWORTHY BREAKTHROUGH FOR NEUROSCIENCE

  (Mr. McNERNEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. McNERNEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize an important 
breakthrough in statistics and neuroscience research. Neurological 
conditions are caused by the brain's communication networks, and these 
conditions can be studied at a systems level. Functional MRIs capture 
3-D images of the brain over time, resulting in millions of 
measurements per subject and billions of possible connections.
  A Rice University statistics professor, Genevera Allen, and her 
collaborators recently developed statistical methods to model how each 
individual's brain is wired and then applied

[[Page 14070]]

these methods to synesthesia, a condition in which individuals 
automatically associate specific colors with numbers and letters. The 
team discovered that areas of the brain responsible for processing 
colors are functionally connected to areas that process letters and 
numbers in synesthetes. This breakthrough is relevant to other 
neurological diseases, such as autism and Alzheimer's, and demonstrates 
how statistical science is vital to neuroscience research.
  I urge my colleagues to support critical science funding so that this 
type of work may continue.

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