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Can a tiny slice of mouse brain help us understand the complex human mind?

For all the advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience over the past century, the human brain is still the most intricate and enigmatic machinery on Earth. Scientists are still slowly untangling the brains’s web of profoundly complex connections, seeking the yet elusive knowledge of how it all actually works. This visualisation reconstructs a dustmite-sized slice of a mouse cortex that has been used in recent research. While the mapping reveals much about brain mechanics, it also illustrates the immense challenges scientists face when attempting to map even a minuscule amount of brain material.

Video by Nature

8 September 2015
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