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by Neuroscience News
April 09, 2025
from
NeuroscienceNews Website
This image shows a
subset of more than 1,000
of the 120,000 brain
cells (neuron + glia)
reconstructed in the
MICRONS project.
Each reconstructed
neuron is a different random color.
In this image, the
glowing neurons are colored.
Credit: Forrest
Collman/Allen Institute
The mission of Obama's 'BRAIN Initiative' in 2013
was to map the human brain.
Twelve year later scientists have mapped 200,000
cells and 523 million synapses of mouse brain,
smaller than a grain of sand.
That's all...!
After billions of dollars and countless man hours,
note that they are not one inch closer to figuring
out how the mind works...
Source
Scientists have created the most detailed wiring diagram of a
mammalian brain to date, mapping every cell and synapse in a cubic
millimeter of a mouse's visual cortex.
Using cutting-edge microscopy, AI, and 3D
reconstruction, researchers captured more than 200,000 cells and
over 500 million connections.
The work revealed surprising principles of brain organization,
including new inhibitory cell behaviors and network-wide
coordination. This achievement provides a foundational tool for
understanding brain function, intelligence, and neurological
disorders.
In 1979, famed molecular biologist, Francis Crick, stated
that it would be,
"[impossible] to create an exact wiring
diagram for a cubic millimeter of brain tissue and the way all
its neurons are firing."
But during the last seven years, a global team of
more than 150 neuroscientists and researchers has brought that
closer to reality.
The Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks (MICrONS)
Project has built the most detailed wiring diagram of a
mammalian brain to date.
Today, scientists published the scientific findings (Perisomatic
Ultrastructure efficiently classifies Cells in Mouse Cortex)
from this massive data resource in a collection of ten studies in
the Nature family of journals.
The wiring diagram and its data, freely available through the
MICrONS Explorer, are 1.6 petabytes in size (equivalent to 22 years
of non-stop HD video), and offer never-before-seen insight into
brain function and organization of the visual system.
"The MICrONS advances published in this
special issue of Nature are a watershed moment for
neuroscience, comparable to the
Human Genome Project in
their transformative potential," said David A. Markowitz,
Ph.D., former IARPA program manager who coordinated this work.
"IARPA's moonshot investment in the MICrONS program has
shattered previous technological limitations, creating the first
platform to study the relationship between neural structure and
function at scales necessary to understand intelligence.
This achievement validates our focused
research approach and sets the stage for future scaling to the
whole brain level."
Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine
began by using specialized microscopes to record the brain activity
from a one cubic millimeter portion of a mouse's visual cortex as
the animal watched various movies and YouTube clips.
Afterwards, Allen Institute researchers took that same cubic
millimeter of the brain and sliced it into more than 25,000 layers,
each 1/400th the width of a human hair, and used an array
of electron microscopes to take high-resolution pictures of each
slice.
Finally, another team at Princeton University used artificial
intelligence and machine learning to reconstruct the cells and
connections into a 3D volume.
Combined with the recordings of brain activity, the result is the
largest wiring diagram and functional map of the brain to date,
containing,
more than 200,000 cells, four kilometers of
axons (the branches that reach out to other cells) and 523
million synapses (the connection points between cells).
"Inside that tiny speck is an entire
architecture like an exquisite forest," said Clay Reid,
M.D., Ph.D., senior investigator and one of the early
founders of electron microscopy connectomics who brought
this area of science to the Allen Institute 13 years ago.
"It has all sorts of rules of connections that we knew from
various parts of neuroscience, and within the reconstruction
itself, we can test the old theories and hope to find new
things that no one has ever seen before."
A New Look at Brain Function and
Organization
The findings from the studies reveal new cell types,
characteristics, organizational and functional principles, and a new
way to classify cells.
Among the most surprising findings was,
the discovery of a new principle of
inhibition within the brain.
Scientists previously thought of inhibitory cells
- those that suppress neural activity - as a simple force that
dampens the action of other cells.
However, researchers discovered a far more sophisticated level of
communication:
Inhibitory cells are not random in their
actions; instead, they are highly selective about which
excitatory cells they target, creating a network-wide system of
coordination and cooperation.
Some inhibitory cells work together, suppressing
multiple excitatory cells, while others are more precise, targeting
only specific types.
"This is the future in many ways," explained
Andreas Tolias, Ph.D., one of the lead scientists who
worked on this project at both Baylor College of Medicine and
Stanford University.
"MICrONS will stand as a landmark where we build brain
foundation models that span many levels of analysis, beginning
from the behavioral level to the representational level of
neural activity and even to the molecular level."
What this Means for Science and
Medicine
Understanding the brain's form and function and the ability to
analyze the detailed connections between neurons at an unprecedented
scale opens new possibilities for studying the brain and
intelligence.
It also has implications for disorders like,
-
Alzheimer's
-
Parkinson's
-
autism
-
schizophrenia,
...involving disruptions in neural communication.
"If you have a broken radio and you have the
circuit diagram, you'll be in a better position to fix it." said
Nuno da Costa, Ph.D., associate investigator at the Allen
Institute.
"We are describing a kind of Google map or blueprint of this
grain of sand. In the future, we can use this to compare the
brain wiring in a healthy mouse to the brain wiring in a model
of disease."
Collaboration Across Borders
The MICrONS Project is a collaborative effort of more than
150 scientists and researchers from,
...and many others.
"Doing this kind of large, team-scale science
requires a lot of cooperation," said Forrest Collman,
Ph.D., associate director of data and technology at the Allen
Institute.
"It requires people to dream big and to agree
to tackle problems that aren't obviously solvable, and that's
how advances happen."
The collaborative, global effort was made
possible by support from the,
"The BRAIN Initiative plays a critical role
in bringing together scientists from various disciplines to
perform complex and challenging research that cannot be achieved
in isolation," said John Ngai, Ph.D., director of the
BRAIN Initiative®.
"Basic science building blocks, like how the
brain is wired, are the foundation we need to better understand
brain injury and disease, to bring treatments and cures closer
to clinical use."
A map of neuronal connectivity, form, and
function from a grain of sand-sized portion of the brain is not just
a scientific marvel, but a step toward understanding the elusive
origins of thought, emotion, and consciousness.
The "impossible" task first envisioned by
Francis Crick in 1979 is now one step closer to reality...
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