Danielle Bassett: Understanding your brain as a network and as art

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How do connectivity patterns inside of your brain change when you learn a new skill? Danielle Bassett seeks to uncover this complexity and develop treatments for neurological diseases with math—and art.

As the youngest recipient of the 2014 MacArthur Award Genius Grant and an Assistant Professor of Innovation in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Bioengineering, Danielle Bassett derives mathematical models from aesthetic representations of brain networks. She aims to diagram the organizational principles in the human brain and understand how brain networks can be reconfigured to quickly incorporate new information and enhance learning, tackling seemingly unsolvable problems with grace and confidence.

[Video and text source: TEDx Talks You Tube channel]