Conformal Mapping and Brain Flattening

In this dissertation we study some of the main results concerning conformal mappings in the complex plane and between Riemann surfaces and we apply those results to the so-called brain flattening problem. In the first part of this thesis we prove the Riemann Mapping Theorem and we provide an introduction to the Uniformization Theorem for simply connected Riemann surfaces. The second part of the thesis is focused on the brain flattening problem, which deals with how to construct a conformal mapping from the brain's cortical surface to the unitary sphere. This procedure leads to a possible definition of the discrete mean curvature on a triangulated closed surface of genus zero. This flattening method has several applications in neuroscience.