AI Summary
A project funded by the NIH's BRAIN Initiative aims to map the connections in the mouse and macaque brains using advanced techniques. The projects include mapping the fine structures and connections in a piece of the mouse brain, tracing the long-range connections in the macaque brain, and characterizing brain cell types to understand connectivity. The goal is to create complete wiring diagrams of these mammalian brains.
A complete map of all the connections in an entire mammalian brain may be in sight. Allen Institute researchers have just launched three new projects to construct large, detailed maps of neuronal connections in sections of the mouse and macaque brains, with an eye toward creating full wiring diagrams of these animals’ brains in the future. These projects are funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative.
Allen Institute research teams will use the funding to:
map the fine structures and connections in a 10mm3 piece of the mouse brain using electron microscopy; apply new, cutting-edge techniques known as BARseq and BRICseq to trace the long-range connections of hundreds of thousands of neurons in the macaque brain; and scale up techniques that characterize brain cell types by 3D shape, electrical properties, and gene expression to better understand connectivity between different types of cells across the whole mouse brain.
Project 1: Enhancing transmission electron microscopy techniques to visualize brain cell shape and cell-to-cell connection networks of the mouse brain
Researchers will aim to scale and optimize a transmission electron microscopy (TEM) pipeline. The goal will be to use this pipeline to image an entire hemisphere of a mouse brain at 120 nanometer resolution and the cortical basal ganglia thalamic loop (up to 10 mm3) in very fine detail to better understand how the mouse brain functions. Researchers will then assess whether this technology can be used to image an entire mouse