The map is the culmination of years of work by scientists to trace the vast network of cells and connections within the sample, which was taken roughly a decade ago from the brain of a patient undergoing surgery to prevent serious epileptic seizures.
Although the sample is just a tiny fraction of an inch across — about half the size of a sesame seed — it contains more than 50,000 brain cells, or neurons, and roughly 130 million of the thread-like axons that transmit signals between them. But it's only about a millionth of the volume of an entire human brain, which is estimated to consist of about 100 billion cells.
"You can think of the brain like a bowl of spaghetti," said Dr. Jeff Lichtman, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University, who headed the project. "We sliced it into very thin images and then traced each strand of pasta.""When you get to look at things that you couldn't have seen before, it gives you an opportunity to start thinking about things in ways that go beyond your imagination," he said.
The sample was taken from the temporal lobe of the patient's neocortex, an outer region of the brain's "gray matter" associated with hearing and memory. After it was surgically removed, he and his colleagues preserved it in a type of resin and stained it with heavy metals to reveal its cellular structure.
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