This MIT Device Maps the Human Brain With Unprecedented Resolution and Speed
Published in Brain Architecture & Maps.
A squishy, fatty, beige-colored organ covered with grooves and ridges, the brain doesn’t look all that impressive on the surface.
But hidden underneath are up to 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses—the connections between neurons that form networks—densely packed in a squishy three-pound organ that controls our thoughts, feelings, movement, memories, and sense of self.
For the past two decades, scientists have carefully dissected the internal neural connections and workings of the brain by carefully chopping it up into paper-thin pieces. From there, they’ve built multiple maps of the brain’s cellular population, architecture, connections, and gene expression. Like charting the landscape of a new world, these maps have been consolidated into what amounts to a Google Maps for the brain. These atlases allow us to decipher brain function, bridging genetic expression to cell functions, network connections, and behavior.
At least for rodents and other animals. Mapping the brain is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. A small chunk of a mouse’s brain, when imaged at single-cell resolution, takes years to process, scan, and reconstruct into 3D computer models. Any trip-ups during the process ruins the product. Mapping the human brain, much larger in size, is far more difficult.
This month, a team from MIT developed a “holistic” brain-mapping platform that captures the anatomy of large slices of the human brain with unprecedented resolution and speed, slashing a process that normally takes between a week and a month to a few days.
They used the platform to image an Alzheimer’s brain, after physically expanding brain tissues with a hydrogel. The automated system sliced, imaged, and automatically stitched the images together and found myriads of cellular changes and problems with neural connections, including inflammation.