Brain Circuits: Harvard Medical School Researchers Crawl a Neural Network
Summary
TLDRThis lab research delves into the cerebral cortex, the brain's outer layer responsible for perception, memory, and planning. The study is divided into two parts: observing neuron activity in response to visual stimuli and tracing the physical connections between these neurons using electron microscopy. The team created a 3D wiring diagram by stitching together millions of high-resolution images, allowing them to map a partial circuit and gain insights into how the brain processes visual information. This novel approach offers a powerful tool for exploring the brain's complexity and the enigma of the mind.
Takeaways
- 🧠 The lab focuses on studying the cerebral cortex, the outer part of the brain responsible for perception, memory, and planning.
- 🔬 The research aims to understand the brain circuit by circuit, with each circuit comprising approximately 10,000 neurons and tens of millions of connections.
- 🐁 The first part of the study involves observing the brain's response to visual stimuli by recording the activity of 50 neurons in an animal's brain.
- 💡 Neurons react to specific elements in the visual scene, and each neuron's activation is represented by a flash of light.
- 🔍 A significant challenge in this research is tracing the physical connections between the observed neurons.
- 📸 The second part of the study uses an electron microscope to take millions of high-resolution images of the neurons over several months.
- 🧩 The process of creating a wiring diagram involves assembling a three-dimensional representation of the neural circuit from billions of pixels.
- 👨🔬 Three scientists manually traced the connections for 10 selected neurons from the 3D images, creating a partial wiring diagram of the circuit.
- 🎯 The study identified the target neurons for each of the 10 neurons, contributing to the understanding of how the brain processes visual information.
- 🌟 This research offers a new and powerful approach to explore the complexity of brain circuits and contributes to the understanding of how the mind works.
Q & A
What is the primary focus of the lab's research?
-The lab's research primarily focuses on studying the cerebral cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain responsible for perception, memory, and planning.
What is a 'circuit' in the context of the cerebral cortex?
-A 'circuit' in the context of the cerebral cortex refers to a network of roughly 10,000 neurons with tens of millions of connections between them.
What are the two main aspects researchers aim to understand about these circuits?
-Researchers aim to understand what the circuit does and how it does it, which involves studying both the function and the connectivity of the neurons within the circuit.
How does the lab observe the brain's response to visual stimuli?
-The lab observes the brain's response to visual stimuli by showing a movie to an animal and recording the activity of 50 neurons in the animal's brain, which light up as they fire in response to specific elements in the visual scene.
What is the challenge in studying these neural circuits?
-The challenge lies in tracing the physical connections between the neurons, which requires high-resolution imaging and complex analysis to map out the wiring diagram of the circuit.
What role does the electron microscope play in the study?
-The electron microscope is used to take millions of high-resolution pictures of the neurons over several months, which are then assembled into a wiring diagram.
How does the lab create a three-dimensional representation of the neural circuit?
-The lab creates a three-dimensional representation by stitching together millions of pictures, comprising billions of pixels, to visualize the dense network of connections between neurons.
What was the process for tracing the connections of the selected neurons?
-Three scientists from the lab selected 10 individual neurons that were observed firing in the first part of the study and painstakingly traced their connections using the 3D images, creating a partial wiring diagram of the circuit.
What does this research offer in terms of understanding the brain's visual processing?
-This research provides a new approach to understanding how the brain sees by allowing researchers to examine the complex circuits in the brain and their connectivity in detail.
Why is understanding the brain's circuits considered important for studying the mind?
-Understanding the brain's circuits is crucial for studying the mind because it offers insights into the complex processes that underlie perception, memory, and cognition, which are fundamental to understanding how the mind works.
Outlines
🧠 Studying the Cerebral Cortex
The paragraph introduces a lab's focus on studying the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain responsible for perception, memory, and planning. The lab's approach involves examining neural circuits, each consisting of approximately 10,000 neurons with tens of millions of connections. The study is divided into two parts: observing the brain's response to visual stimuli and tracing the physical connections between neurons using electron microscopy. The lab's goal is to understand both the function and the mechanism of these circuits, which is crucial for deciphering how the brain processes visual information.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Cerebral Cortex
💡Neurons
💡Circuit
💡Electron Microscope
💡Wiring Diagram
💡Three-Dimensional Representation
💡Neural Circuit
💡Visual Scene
💡Firing
💡Mind
💡Complexity
Highlights
The lab focuses on studying the cerebral cortex, which is crucial for perception, memory, and planning.
Understanding the cerebral cortex involves examining individual neural circuits, each comprising roughly 10,000 neurons.
Neurons in a circuit are interconnected with tens of millions of connections, forming complex networks.
The study aims to understand both the function and the operational mechanism of these neural circuits.
The first part of the study involves observing the brain's response to visual stimuli.
Neurons react to specific visual elements, as seen through their activation in the brain.
The challenge lies in tracing the physical connections between these activated neurons.
The second part of the study uses an electron microscope to capture high-resolution images of neurons.
Millions of images are taken over several months to create a detailed wiring diagram of the neural circuit.
A three-dimensional representation of the neural circuit is created by stitching together billions of pixels.
Three scientists manually traced the connections of 10 selected neurons from the 3D images.
This partial wiring diagram allows for the first time a detailed look at the connections between individual neurons.
The study provides a new approach to understanding how the brain processes visual information.
The research offers a powerful method to explore the complexity of neural circuits in the brain.
Understanding the mind's workings is one of nature's greatest mysteries, and this study contributes to unraveling it.
The lab's research presents a significant step forward in the field of neuroscience.
Transcripts
my lab studies the brain and in
particular its that is the outside of
the brain the cerebral cortex the
cerebral cortex is what we use to
perceive to remember and to plan things
to understand the cerebral cortex we
would like to go one circuit at a time
and a circuit is roughly 10,000 neurons
with tens of millions of connections
between those neurons to understand one
of these circuits you'd really want two
things you'd want to know what the
circuit does and how it does it so we
did this study in two parts the first
part it's actually something we've been
doing for five or six years now and it's
literally watching the brain see on the
left is a movie we showed an animal on
the right you see 50 neurons that are
flashing away in the animals brain every
time a neuron gets bright it's firing in
fact these neurons are reacting to very
specific elements in the visual scene
the big challenge is tracing the
physical connections between these
particular neurons which brings us to
the second part of the study so this is
the electron microscope that we use to
take millions of pictures over the
course of several months after
collecting high-resolution images of the
neurons in question from our souped-up
microscope we began the process of
assembling a wiring diagram here's a
bird's eye view of the neural circuit
when we zoom in you can begin to see the
impossible thicket of connections
between these cells we created this
three-dimensional representation by
stitching together millions of pictures
comprising billions of pixels then three
scientists my lab selected 10 individual
neurons neurons that would observed
firing in the first part of the study
and they painstakingly traced the
connections for these chosen 10 using
our 3d images they'd crawl through the
brains dense thicket for the first time
jumping from neuron to neuron to create
a partial wiring diagram of the circuit
they were able to identify each neurons
targets as shown here all together this
gives us a new approach to answer the
question how does the brain see more
importantly we can finally look at
circuits in the brain in all of their
complexity how the mind works is one of
the greatest mysteries in nature and
this research presents a new and
powerful way for us to explore that
mystery
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