MouseLight Neuron AL0006

A vast neural tracing effort by a team of Janelia scientists has upped the number of fully-traced neurons in the mouse brain by a factor of 10. Researchers can now download and browse the data in three dimensions. Inside the mouse brain, individual neurons zigzag across hemispheres, embroider branching patterns and, researchers have now discovered, can even spool out spindly fibers up to 45 centimeters long. Scientists can see and explore these wandering neural traces in 3-D in the most detailed map of mouse brain wiring yet created. The map reconstructs the shape and position of more than 300 of the 70 million neurons in the mouse brain. Previous efforts to trace the path of individual neurons had topped out in the dozens. The selectively-labeled neurons were mapped in an iterative process with two-photon microscopy. The brain is sliced in 200-micron sections and a few dozen neurons are labeled at a time and imaged. Each brain imaged yields about 50 terabytes of data, each containing mapped neurons which can be browsed via the NeuronBrowser application at https://ml-neuronbrowser.janelia.org/. Researchers interested in the complete raw data set should contact Janelia to discuss obtaining it via hardware transfer.

一支由Janelia科学家组成的庞大团队在神经追踪领域取得了突破性进展，将小鼠大脑中完全追踪到的神经元数量提升了十倍。研究人员现可下载并三维浏览这些数据。在小鼠大脑内部，单个神经元穿梭于半球之间，编织出复杂的分支图案，且研究人员最近发现，这些神经元甚至可以延伸出长达45厘米的细长纤维。科学家们可以在迄今为止制作的最为详尽的小鼠大脑神经网络图谱中观察并探索这些游走的神经网络轨迹。该图谱重建了小鼠大脑中超过7000万神经元中的300多个的形态和位置。先前追踪单个神经元路径的努力仅限于数十个。这些选择性标记的神经元通过迭代过程结合双光子显微镜进行映射。大脑被切成200微米厚的切片，每次标记并成像数十个神经元。每张大脑图像可产生约50太字节的数据，其中包含的映射神经元可通过位于https://ml-neuronbrowser.janelia.org/的NeuronBrowser应用程序进行浏览。对完整原始数据集感兴趣的学者应与Janelia联系，探讨通过硬件传输获取数据的可能性。