The largest map of the mammalian brain was recorded

According to RCO News Agency, The largest and most comprehensive three -dimensional map of the mammal brain to date offers an unprecedented understanding of how neurons are connected and functioned. This new map, which has recorded one millimeter of mouse vision, enables scientists to study brain function in extremely detailed details and potentially an important understanding of how neural activity shapes behavior, how complex characteristics such as consciousness and even the meaning of humanity.

“Our behaviors eventually stem from activity in the brain, and brain tissue has very similar properties in all mammals,” says Forrest Collman, a member of the Allen Researchers Institute in Seattle. This is one of the reasons that we believe that understanding about the cortex of the mouse can be generalized to humans.

It took seven years for the achievement that Francis Creek’s biologist called it “impossible” in year 2, and three researchers from three institutions participated. The study began with a group that recorded nervous activity from a part of the mouse’s visual cortex, about the size of a sand grain, while watching YouTube movies and clips.

Then, the second group described the same area of ​​the brain and divided it into layers as the width of a human hair and took each incision. Due to the subtle nature of the structure, the cutting process cannot be stopped for a long time, so the team has made changes. “We spent 2 days and 2 nights dividing this millimeter tissue into approximately 6,000 layers,” says Nuno Da Costa, a team member as well as a researcher at the Allen Institute.

From there, a third team used artificial intelligence to track all the cells and rebuild each cut on a 3D map. “It was as if I asked artificial intelligence to complete the world’s toughest coloring book,” says Coleman. You have 2 million images in three dimensions and each cell must be dyed with a different colored pencil. Artificial intelligence must decide where a cell starts and where the next cell stops.

This data was eventually combined with the functional activity recorded at the start of the project to communicate with what the mice saw in the brain. The map shows the stunning complexity of the brain. Despite its small size, it had more than 6,000 cells with four kilometers of branching between them and the 5 million synapses that bond the cells.

Data are currently challenging the assumptions about how neurons communicate and show that they not only target adjacent cells, but actively affect other cells assigned to process the same visual stimuli.

Researchers hope their map will fill some scientific gaps between neurological activities and behaviors and ultimately help discover complex features such as intelligence. “This is an innovative work that will be valuable to the scientific community,” says Natalie Roshfort of the University of Edinburgh.

Beyond its immediate applications, we may even be able to test the theories of awareness. If one has a theory of awareness, one may be able to ask these data, whether one can confirm or reject.

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