The largest and most detailed map of the human brain covers just 1 cubic millimeter of brain tissue (the size of half a grain of rice), but with high enough resolution to show individual neurons and their connections. It took 1.4 petabytes to encode this data.
Although it’s just a tiny slice of the brain, the map has led to some surprising discoveries. For example, the researchers found that some neurons form giant nodes. “We have no idea why—no one has ever seen this before,” Google researcher Viren Jain said about the neurons.
- How are memories stored and retrieved?
- How do we recognize objects and faces?
- Why do we need so much sleep?
- What goes wrong in Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases?
The human brain has about 86 billion neurons connected by more than 100 trillion synapses, allowing us to think, feel, move, and interact with the world. By creating a map of these neural connections, we can uncover new insights into how our brains work and why they sometimes don’t.
To build detailed maps at the synaptic level, researchers need to study the brain at nanometer resolution and work with massive amounts of data. This presents a significant technical challenge, requiring constant innovation in visualization techniques, artificial intelligence algorithms, and data management tools. This is why Google Research formed its Connectomics team 10 years ago.
While the team has developed technologies over the past decade to better process, analyze, and share data—allowing researchers to make significant progress in understanding the brain—mapping the entire connectome of the human brain will require collecting and analyzing one billion terabytes of data, which exceeds the capabilities of current technology.
It is hoped that one day, scientists will have an accurate understanding of how we form memories and what underlies mental disorders and diseases.
Source: google.blog