Inspired by the large-scale sky surveys with which astronomers explore the cosmos, neuroscientists in Seattle, Washington, have spent four years systematically surveying the neural activity of the mouse visual cortex. The Allen Brain Observatory’s first data release, on 13 July, provides a publicly accessible data set of unprecedented size and scope, designed to help scientists to model and understand the human brain.
The project is part of an ambitious ten-year brain-research plan announced in 2012 by the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Designed to catalogue neurons and their electrical characteristics in minute detail, the initiative aims to enable new insights into how perception and cognition arise.
To compile the brain observatory’s first data set, researchers used a specialized microscope to record calcium waves that occur when neurons fire, sampling activity in 25 mice over 360 experimental sessions, while the animals viewed a battery of visual stimuli such as moving patterns of lines, images of natural scenes and short movies. The data set so far includes 18,000 cells in 4 areas of the visual cortex, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. The set also includes information about each neuron’s location and its expression of certain genetic markers. At 30 terabytes, the raw data are too large to share easily, but users can download a more manageable processed data set, or explore it online.
Comments are closed.