Researchers have been constructing and studying these maps, known as connectomes, to see if they might be predictive of, for instance, behaviors or mental health conditions.

This research has so far found that connectome activity that is similar across individuals is important and can be predictive of behavior all by itself. So the remaining activity has largely been cast aside.

“But what’s going on in that activity? It has been left behind, so we really don’t know whether there’s value in it,” says lead author Raimundo Rodriguez, a Ph.D. student in the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program at Yale School of Medicine (YSM).