On May 10th, scientists from Harvard University and Google successfully mapped a small portion of the human brain, a detailed 3D map about the size of a cubic millimeter.
This research achievement has been published in the journal "Science" and made available online for researchers worldwide to access.
The map includes approximately 57,000 cells and nearly 150 million synapses, the connection points between neurons, with a data volume of 1400TB, making it the highest-resolution human brain image ever created.
The sample used by the research team came from a 45-year-old female who provided a sample of her brain cortex during epilepsy treatment surgery.
To create this image, the team sliced the sample into about 5000 sections, each only 34 nanometers thick, and used an electron microscope for imaging.
Subsequently, they developed an artificial intelligence model capable of integrating the microscope images and reconstructing the entire sample in 3D.
Upon examining this model, researchers discovered some unconventional neuron connections, with some neurons having up to 50 connections between them, and observed that some neurons were almost perfect mirror images of each other.
Harvard neuroscientist Jeff Lichtman expressed that the dataset is full of surprises, as "there are many things in it that are different from what you read in textbooks."
