it used to be tse connectis in thebrain, 100 billion nerve cells in the average human ain, each nerve cell makes something like 1,000-10,000ontacts with other nerve cells. the contacts n be on, can be off,omeone calculated that the nuer of brain states -- the number opossible permutations ceeds the number of elemeary particles in thenown universe. how do y make theconnections? oneiew is it's allade by genes, there in thgenome and fixed in infancynd there is not much you can do when there is damag to the adult brain, for exame when there is stroke the dogma h always beethat there is ts -- this ties into the modular vi ofrain functis that there are different highly specialized regions, andvery point on the skin surface goes to a particular point ithe brain, and so on and so forth, so if you punch out a mole a function is lost a that's , so what we have learned from our experiments in the last 10-15 years and some of my colleagues in other stitutions is this is simply not true. instead of thinking of punched-t modules you really thinkf a dynamic organism, almost, a brain, and when there