Mapping Neural Connections and Their Development II
summary
Claimed ability to map every wire in a volume using an automatic tape‑collecting ultramicrotome plus a 61‑beam multisem SEM that generates ~11 TB/day. Pipeline slices 30 nm sections, stains membranes, images, aligns and segments; a cubic millimeter becomes ~2 PB of data (cubic millimeter = ~2 PB, ~40,000 neurons, ~1 billion synapses). Early results: axons often make multiple synapses onto the same dendrite, axon cohorts “hop” between nearby dendrites, astrocytes/ microglia show unexpected contacts, and one apical dendrite even contains a capillary.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (12)
- 0:00Brain development and wiring
- 2:20Biological models of wiring
- 6:38Connectomics pipeline
- 10:28Imaging challenges
- 14:24Multi-beam electron microscopy
- 20:59Large-scale data visualization
- 25:58Cortex structure and scale
- 33:24Selectivity in connectivity
- 37:31Limits of understanding
- 41:45Microglia and observations
- 43:12Thalamus circuit analysis
- 56:00Complexity and the future
