Sequencing the Connectome Converting connectivity into a sequencing problem can be broken down conceptually into three components. (A) Label each neuron with a unique sequence of nucleotides — a DNA “barcode.” (B) Associate barcodes from synaptically connected neurons with one another, so that each neuron can be thought of as a “bag of barcodes” — copies of its own “host” barcode and copies of “invader” barcodes from synaptic partners. (C) Join host and invader barcodes into barcode pairs. These pairs can be subjected to high-throughput sequencing. (Credit: Anthony M. A team of neuroscientists led by Professor Anthony Zador, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have proposed a revolutionary new way to create a connectivity map (“connectome”) of the whole brain of the mouse at the resolution of single neurons: high-throughput DNA sequencing. This reconstruction of serial electron micrographs has yielded what to date is the only complete connectome, that of C. elegans (a nemotode or roundworm).
Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) NIH Home > Research & Training What is the BRAIN Initiative? The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is part of a new Presidential focus aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain. By accelerating the development and application of innovative technologies, researchers will be able to produce a revolutionary new dynamic picture of the brain that, for the first time, shows how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space. Long desired by researchers seeking new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders, this picture will fill major gaps in our current knowledge and provide unprecedented opportunities for exploring exactly how the brain enables the human body to record, process, utilize, store, and retrieve vast quantities of information, all at the speed of thought. A map of overall task-fMRI brain coverage from the seven tasks used in the Human Connectome Project. Meeting Information
The Brain CONNECT Project IBM scientists create most comprehensive map of the brain’s network "The Mandala of the Mind": The long-distance network of the Macaque monkey brain, spanning the cortex, thalamus, and basal ganglia, showing 6,602 long-distance connections between 383 brain regions. (PNAS) The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published Tuesday a landmark paper entitled “Network architecture of the long-distance pathways in the macaque brain” (an open-access paper) by Dharmendra S. Modha (IBM Almaden) and Raghavendra Singh (IBM Research-India) with major implications for reverse-engineering the brain and developing a network of cognitive-computing chips. “We have successfully uncovered and mapped the most comprehensive long-distance network of the Macaque monkey brain, which is essential for understanding the brain’s behavior, complexity, dynamics and computation,” Dr. “We studied four times the number of brain regions and have compiled nearly three times the number of connections when compared to the largest previous endeavor,” he pointed out. Dr.
List of animals by number of neurons This is a list of representative animals by the number of neurons in their whole nervous system and the number of neurons in their brain (for those with a brain). These numbers are estimates derived by multiplying the density of neurons in a particular animal by the average volume of the animal's brain. Overview[edit] Neurons may be packed to form structures such as the brain of vertebrates or the neural ganglions of insects. The number of neurons and their relative abundance in different parts of the brain is a determinant of neural function and, consequently, of behavior. Whole nervous system[edit] Cerebral cortex[edit] See also[edit] References[edit]
List of topics related to brain mapping The following is a list of topics related to brain mapping, and major brain mapping research projects (listed below). Coverage is intended to be broad and comprehensive, and adequately cover the entire brain mapping field. Topics included are in rough proportion to their generally accepted overall importance to the human brain structure and function. It is not intended to be recursively exhaustive in every possible direction but to give an overview of what areas of knowledge may be impacted by the large new brain mapping research initiatives. While the emphasis here is on physical brain structure, functional aspects are also included. Mind concepts (as in mind vs. body), and cognitive and behavioral aspects, are introduced where they have at least a fairly direct connection to physical aspects of the brain, neurons, spinal cord, nerve networks, neurotransmitters, etc. Topics are roughly clustered as shown in the table of contents. Broad Scope[edit] The Neuron doctrine[edit] General[edit]
BRAIN Initiative Understanding how the brain works is arguably one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time. The BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, also referred to as the Brain Activity Map Project) is a proposed collaborative research initiative announced by the Obama administration on April 2, 2013, with the goal of mapping the activity of every neuron in the human brain.[2][3][4][5][6] Based upon the Human Genome Project, the initiative has been projected to cost more than $300 million per year for ten years.[2] Announcement[edit] Experimental approaches[edit] News reports said the research would map the dynamics of neuron activity in mice and other animals[3] and eventually the tens of billions of neurons in the human brain.[8] Working group[edit] The advisory committee is:[12] [edit] Scientists offered differing views of the plan. The projects face great logistical challenges. See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] BRAIN Initiative website
Human Connectome Project The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a five-year project sponsored by sixteen components of the National Institutes of Health, split between two consortia of research institutions. The project was launched in July 2009[1] as the first of three Grand Challenges of the NIH's Blueprint for Neuroscience Research.[2] On September 15, 2010, the NIH announced that it would award two grants: $30 million over five years to a consortium led by Washington University in Saint Louis and the University of Minnesota, and $8.5 million over three years to a consortium led by Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California Los Angeles.[3] The goal of the Human Connectome Project is to build a "network map" that will shed light on the anatomical and functional connectivity within the healthy human brain, as well as to produce a body of data that will facilitate research into brain disorders such as dyslexia, autism, Alzheimer's disease, and schizophrenia.[4]
The Human Connectome Project The Human Connectome Project Human Connectome The NIH Human Connectome Project is an ambitious effort to map the neural pathways that underlie human brain function. The overarching purpose of the Project is to acquire and share data about the structural and functional connectivity of the human brain. It will greatly advance the capabilities for imaging and analyzing brain connections, resulting in improved sensitivity, resolution, and utility, thereby accelerating progress in the emerging field of human connectomics. Altogether, the Human Connectome Project will lead to major advances in our understanding of what makes us uniquely human and will set the stage for future studies of abnormal brain circuits in many neurological and psychiatric disorders. Consortia The Blueprint has funded two major cooperative agreements that will take complementary approaches to deciphering the brain's complex wiring diagram. Latest Updates Washington University in St.
Brain Mapping Foundation - Home Page First map of the human brain reveals a simple, grid-like structure between neurons In an astonishing new study, scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have imaged human and monkey brains and found… well, the image above says it all. It turns out that the pathways in your brain — the connections between neurons — are almost perfectly grid-like. It’s rather weird: If you’ve ever seen a computer ribbon cable — a flat, 2D ribbon of wires stuck together, such as an IDE hard drive cable — the brain is basically just a huge collection of these ribbons, traveling parallel or perpendicular to each other. This new imagery comes from a souped-up MRI scanner that uses diffusion spectrum imaging to detect the movement of water molecules within axons (the long connections made by neurons). “Before, we had just driving directions. Curiously, it seems like this network of highways and byways is laid out when we’re still an early fetus. Read more at NIH
Simple mathematical pattern describes shape of neuron ‘jungle’ Neuron shape model: target points (red) distributed in a spherical volume and connected to optimize wiring in a tree (black) (credit: H. Cuntz et al./PNAS) University College London (UCL) neuroscientists have found that there is a simple pattern that describes the tree-like shape of all neurons. Neurons look remarkably like trees, and connect to other cells with many branches that effectively act like wires in an electrical circuit, carrying impulses that represent sensation, emotion, thought and action. Over 100 years ago, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, sought to systematically describe the shapes of neurons, and was convinced that there must be a unifying principle underlying their diversity. Cajal proposed that neurons spread out their branches so as to use as little wiring as possible to reach other cells in the network. New work by UCL neuroscientists has revisited this century-old hypothesis using modern computational methods.
Connectomics Connectomics is the production and study of connectomes: comprehensive maps of connections within an organism's nervous system, typically its brain or eye. Because these structures are extremely complex, methods within this field use a high-throughput application of neural imaging and histological techniques in order to increase the speed, efficiency, and resolution of maps of the multitude of neural connections in a nervous system. While the principal focus of such a project is the brain, any neural connections could theoretically be mapped by connectomics, including, for example, neuromuscular junctions. Tools[edit] Model Systems[edit] Aside from the human brain, some of the model systems used for connectomics research are the mouse,[3] the fruit fly,[4] the nematode C. elegans,[5][6] and the barn owl.[7] Applications[edit] Criticism[edit] Comparison to genomics[edit] See also[edit] References[edit] Further reading[edit] External links[edit]
The Connectome — Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Lead investigators Hanspeter Pfister (SEAS ), Jeff Lichtman (FAS/Molecular & Cellular Biology, Center for Brain Science) and Clay Reid (HMS/Neurobiology, Center for Brain Science) Description The overall goal of the Connectome project is to map, store, analyze and visualize the actual neural circuitry of the peripheral and central nervous systems in experimental organisms, based on a very large number of images from high-resolution microscopy. The proposing team from the Center for Brain Sciences has already demonstrated its capacity for, and expertise in, high-throughput imaging. The critical challenges are computational, as the total number of voxels needed to establish the Connectome is ~1014.