The University of Vermont has received a National Science Foundation grant to use advanced imaging and supercomputing to map the human brain.
The $19 million grant funds state-of-the-art technology at UVM and the University of California San Diego to study how the brain and nervous system work down to individual neurons and the synapses connecting them. UVM Vice President for Research and Economic Development Kirk Dombrowski says the scale of the research is extraordinary.
“The idea is actually both simple and ambitious. Scientists will be able to see and study the incredibly small structures inside brains, nervous systems, tissues and cells in three dimensions and at a scale that has previously been out of reach for most researchers.”
Dombrowski explains that UVM has been designated the national coordinating hub for the 5-year project.
“The project will bring together advanced electron microscopy, artificial intelligence and powerful computing networks. The project will combine new, globally unique, high-throughput electron microscopy located at UVM with UC San Diego’s expertise in advanced imaging analysis and the San Diego supercomputing center’s capabilities in data management and processing.”
Neuroscientist Davi Bock is the principle investigator for the project. He has been working for about 20 years in the developing field of ‘connectomics’ or the science of mapping the brain and nervous system down to individual neurons and the connecting synapses.
“If you want to understand how brains process information getting a wiring diagram is a good place to start. And what has happened is in the last five years or so the imaging technology’s become mature enough and AI-based processing of the petabytes of image data has become capable enough we find ourselves in a position to now translate this technology to a very broad array of biological questions.”
That array of questions could include, Bock says, greater understanding of biological processes in the rest of the body.
“That’s actually a big part of the purpose of this effort, to take the technology that’s been developed for high resolution brain mapping and apply it across all kinds of different tissues. So you could look at the details of how the lung inflates or collapses. You could look at tumors forming. You could look at immune cells migrating throughout the body. And you could see the details of the structure of all these processes using this technology that to this point has mostly been applied just to neural circuit wiring diagrams.”
UVM Larner College of Medicine Dean Richard Page believes the research will be transformational.
“We can bring expertise and instrumentation to study nerve tissue at the level of the connectome that will have important impact on our understanding of the human brain and eventually our treatment of brain disease.”
Boch is excited to begin the detailed neural mapping.
“People should know they have about a hundred billion neurons inside their skulls and each neuron connects to thousands of others. And somehow them all working together gives rise to their consciousness and their ability to learn and remember and behave. And we are looking at how that works the best we can. And we’re still far away from understanding but it’s an amazing galaxy inside your skull that we’re starting to have access to.”
Data collected at the University of Vermont will be sent to collaborators at the University of California San Diego's supercomputing center for analysis of the ultra-high-resolution images.
