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Detailed map of connections within the human brain created by Google

Benefit to explore how the cell map differs in people with mental illness

07-Jun-2021

Key points from article :

Google helped to create connections within the human brain.

It reveals details including patterns of connections between neurons.

Freely available online brain map includes 50,000 cells, rendered in three dimensions.

Data set measures 1.4 petabytes, roughly 700 times the storage capacity of an average modern computer.

Tiny piece of brain from a 45-year-old woman with drug-resistant epilepsy was obtained.

Which was cut in to slices around 30 nanometres thick and used an electron microscope to image every slice.

The entire data is produced in a cubic millimetre, which is usually one pixel in an MRI scan.

Researchers found mysterious pairs of neurons deep in the cortex that hadn’t been observed before.

Lichtman Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology says

"... every brain will be something different from every other one".

Immediate benefit would be to explore the cell map differences in people with mental illness.

Research by Harvard University Published in Biorxiv.

Mentioned in this article:

Click on resource name for more details.

bioRxiv

The preprint server for biology.

Google

Technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products.

Harvard University

Private Ivy League research university in Massachusetts

Jeff Lichtman

Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University

Topics mentioned on this page:
Digital Modeling