![]() Results are streaming in from government efforts to understand and stem the increasing burden of brain disorders in their ageing populations. Such maps are emerging, including in a series of papers published this week that catalogue the cell types in the brain. The BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network-Motor Cortex With that kind of complete, finely contoured map, they could really begin to explain the networks that drive how we think and behave. To truly understand how the brain works, neuroscientists also need to know how each of the roughly 1,000 types of cell thought to exist in the brain speak to each other in their different electrical dialects. Scientists have made maps such as these for the worm 1 and fly 2 brains, and for tiny parts of the mouse 3 and human 4 brains. Zoom in a further 100,000 times and you’ll see the cells’ inner workings - the tiny structures in each one, the points of contact between them and the long-distance connections between brain areas. That’s about how challenging it is to understand how the brain works.įrom the organ’s wrinkled surface, zoom in a million-fold and you’ll see a kaleidoscope of cells of different shapes and sizes, which branch off and reach out to each other. Imagine looking at Earth from space and being able to listen in on what individuals are saying to each other.
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