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When researchers published a major paper on the atlas in April, they'd mapped roughly 15 to 20 percent of all mouse-brain neurons. Then they repeat again with a different mouse and an injection into a different spot. And how do they do that? Well, they remove the mouse brains afterward and chop them up into tiny pieces. And then they track where the glowing protein flows. One technique they're using to figure it out is adding a fluorescent protein to a tiny area with about 100 to 500 neurons. For example, the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas is the most detailed connection map of any mammal's brain. THE ONLY SPECIES THAT'S HAD EVERY NEURON MAPPED IS A MICROSCOPIC WORMīut researchers are working on mammals' brains, too. (That's 0.0000004 percent the number of neurons in a human brain.) This was a lot easier, since the worm has only 302 neurons. The only species that's had every single neuron mapped out is a microscopic worm called C. One way is to start with less complex organisms. In addition, contrary to previous scientific thought, everyone's brain develops new cells and new connections throughout life.
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Different people's brains have cells connected in different ways, so researchers can't just map one brain and call it a day. (For comparison, the National Institutes of Health neuroscience budget is about $5.5 billion a year.) The European Commission has promised $1.3 billion over 10 years to make a detailed computer model of the human brain. Obama's BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) funding started in 2014 and should provide $100 million a year for each of 10 years. The US and the EU recently dumped some significant money into the mix.
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There's a lot of excitement about brain mapping right now. It's a bunch of scientists across the world working on various undertakings. The hope is that doing this will lead to a far greater understanding about how brains work and especially how mental disorders come about - and could be better treated.īelow is a very basic primer on why scientists are mapping the human brain and how they go about doing it: Who's doing the mapping? If that sounds like a tall order, it's because it is. The ultimate goal is to chart the locations of the roughly 85 billion neurons in the brain, their roughly 100 trillion connections, and how they all function. And recently, they have been reporting some promising advances. Researchers around the world are engaged in a massively difficult project to map the entire human brain.