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The NIH Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative has expanded scientists’ understanding of the human brain in recent years, offering fascinating insights into the ways that individual cells and complex neural circuits interact dynamically to enable us to think, feel, and act. But neuroscientists still have much more to learn about how our brains are put together at the most fundamental, subcellular level. As a step in that direction, in a new study supported in part by the NIH BRAIN Initiative and reported in the journal Science , researchers have created the most detailed nanoscale resolution map ever produced of a cubic millimeter of brain tissue, about the size of half a grain of rice.

Researchers have, for the first time, visualized the full network of blood vessels across the cortex of awake mice, finding that blood vessels rhythmically expand and contract leading to “waves” washing across the surface of the brain. These findings, funded by in part by the National Institutes of Health Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies^® Initiative, or The BRAIN Initiative^®, improve the understanding of how the brain receives blood, though the function of the waves remains a mystery.

NIH-funded atlas characterizes over 32 million cells across the mouse brain.

Incredibly detailed cell maps help pave the way for new generation of treatments

In the human brain, 86 billion neurons form more than 100 trillion connections with other neurons at junctions called synapses. Scientists are now working on an ambitious effort to develop technologies to map these connections across the brain, from mice to humans. 

New deep brain stimulation device coupled with powerful AI may improve therapy for treatment-resistant depression

The findings shed light on how the brain processes music and could help brain-computer interfaces to produce more natural-sounding speech.

Early NIH-funded trial is first step towards development of a potential stroke treatment

NIH-funded study shows preliminary results that could lead to new pain treatments

Researchers mapped out all the nerve connections in a larval fruit fly brain.