Neuroscientist leads unprecedented research to map billions of brain cells
UChicago-Argonne project blends science, computation to study inner workings of mind
If you want to know how a machine works, it helps to look inside. Crack open the case and look at how it’s wired together; you might need an engineering degree, a microscope and a lot of time, but eventually you can puzzle out what makes any given device tick.
But can that same approach work for the most amazing machine we know—one capable of making complex calculations in a fraction of a second, while using less energy than a common light bulb?
Reverse engineering the human brain is one of the great scientific challenges of our time, and scientists at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory are combining new techniques in microscopy, neurobiology and computing to reveal the brain’s inner mechanisms in unprecedented detail.