Beautiful 3-D Reconstructions of Brain Cells and All Their Synapses
Nature is full of motifs. If we can understand the structural motifs in the brain, perhaps we can link structure to function.
Prof. Jeff Lichtman of Harvard University is trying to do just that by imaging the ultrathin slices of the brain with Scanning Electron Microscopes and using computers to reconstruc the neuronal tissue in 3D to understand their detailed connections.
This National Geographic video of Jeff and members of his group describes their painstaking yet groundbreaking efforts to elucidate a connectomic map of the brain.