María Figueres Oñate

A set of articles published in Nature and Nature Methods draws a high-resolution map of the structure of and connections between the brain cells of mice. The map is based on data from a single cubic millimetre of brain and includes more than 200,000 cells, around 84,000 neurons and 524 million synaptic connections. Although this is a very small part of the mouse brain, it will help us understand how different types of cells work together.

The Science group of journals publishes several parts of a high-resolution atlas of human brain cells, the largest 'map' of its kind to date. It is a series of papers from an international mega-project, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative - Cell Census Network (BICCN), launched in 2017 to study brain cell types and their functions in humans, non-human primates and rodents. The data "will now allow researchers to address fundamental scientific questions about the human brain and its genetic organisation," states the introduction to the journal's special issue.