Image from the Brain Explorer 2 software, a desktop application that enables users to interactively explore human brain anatomy and gene expression data in 3D. [Allen Institute for Brain Science]
Despite substantial progress in brain research, our understanding of the human brain remains limited. “We really don’t understand the fine circuitry of the brain — even in a relatively simple organism like a mouse,” confessed Ed Lein, a senior investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. But AI in neuroscience research promises to change the game, ushering our understanding of the brain into a new era.“What’s been happening for quite a while now is a desire to really try to understand the basic architecture of the brain better,” Lein said. And what’s become quite clear is that the basic unit of the brain is the cell.” So we need to describe the brain at the cellular level.&…