"Nature" Special Issue: NIH "BRAIN Initiative" Detailed Atlas of Mammal Primary Motor Cortex

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network) has reached its first important milestone, revealing an atlas of cell types and anatomical neuron wiring diagrams in the primary motor cortex of mammals.

"Thanks to this pioneering collaboration, we now have a comprehensive understanding of the brain cells found in the motor cortex of the brain and their basic functional properties," said Francis S.

The human brain is an extremely complex organ, composed of approximately 100 billion neurons and approximately the same number of non-neuronal cells, as well as trillions of neuronal connections

Importantly, understanding the factors that play a role in the development of brain structure and function is a key step in understanding how diseases such as schizophrenia, addiction, epilepsy, and Alzheimer's disease develop

The scientific progress of the past 10 years has allowed researchers to shift from analyzing only the physical characteristics of brain cells to studying the molecular characteristics of cell functions

These scientific advances provide researchers with opportunities to understand the structure and function of the brain at an unprecedented level of detail

In the current series of studies, the researchers used single-cell transcriptome and epigenome measurement data obtained from millions of cells in the motor cortex to create a cross-species, data-driven framework for brain cell types

Researchers have found similar cell types in mice, monkeys and humans, but they have also found important differences in gene expression, which may be responsible for the different ways these three species process neural information

"By integrating data from multiple cutting-edge technologies, BICCN has created a comprehensive reference, classifying and describing many types of cells found in the primary motor cortex of mammals, describing their proportions, spatial distribution, anatomy and physiology.

These preliminary results laid the foundation for further in-depth study of the structure and function of mammalian brain cells

The article was published in "Nature" magazine on October 6, A multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex