A team of US researchers has developed the largest and most detailed circuit diagram of mammalian brain, depicting half a billion synapses and 5.4 kilometers of neuronal connections. 

As part of the MICrONS (Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks) project, the researchers mapped one cubic millimeter of the mouse brain’s visual cortex. The diagram depicts the structure of 84,000 neurons connected via 523 million synapses and about 5.4 km of neuronal wiring, forming an incredibly complex network. 

The result of nine years of work is a three-dimensional, most detailed image of the mammalian brain ever created. More than 150 researchers from 22 institutions were involved in the study, and the results of their work were published in a series of 10 papers in the scientific journal Nature. 

Last year, another research team developed a conectome of the fruit fly’s brain (Scientists complete first map of an insect brain | Nicolaus Copernicus Superior School). 

MICrONS scientists hope their data set will help reveal various features and processes occurring in the brain. 

Source: dzienniknaukowy.pl, Allen Institute for Brain Science, Nature, Science Alert.