This map of a mouse’s brain looks like a galaxy and has scientists in awe

Scientists have created the largest functional map of a brain to date by studying a small section of mouse’s brain - about the size of a poppy seed - while it watched video clips that included scenes from the film “The Matrix”. Researchers mapped 84,000 neurons and 500 million synapses in 3D, forming a detailed neural wiring diagram.

Unraveling the mysteries of the brain

A global team of 150+ scientists used cutting-edge tools: laser-powered microscopes to capture brain activity, electron microscopy to image over 25,000 ultra-thin brain slices, and AI to trace and color-code each neural connection. If laid out, the wiring would span over three miles (five kilometers).

“It definitely inspires a sense of awe, just like looking at pictures of the galaxies,” said leading researcher Forrest Collman of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. “You get a sense of how complicated you are. We’re looking at one tiny part ... of a mouse’s brain and the beauty and complexity that you can see in these actual neurons and the hundreds of millions of connections between them.”

This research was published in the scientific journal “Nature” and made available publicly to scientists and whoever else is interested, allowing for crucial insight into how neurons communicate and how that could relate to brain disorders like autism and Alzheimer’s. It is being compared to the Human Genome Project, which provided the first gene mapping (eventually leading to gene-based treatments), in terms of its foundational impact.

“The technologies developed by this project will give us our first chance to really identify some kind of abnormal pattern of connectivity that gives rise to a disorder,” said another leading researcher, Princeton neuroscientist and computer scientist Sebastian Seung.

The next big goal for researchers is to map an entire mouse brain.

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