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Previous electrical circuits, as images are known, depicted the “connectomes” of the fruit fly and the human brain. One of the reasons MICrONS has been so well received is that the dataset could improve scientists’ understanding of the brain and possibly help them treat brain diseases.

Venkatesh Murthy, a professor of molecular and cell biology at Harvard University who studies neural activity in mice but was not involved in the study, says the project gives him and other scientists a “bird’s eye view” of how individual neurons interact by offering an image “Freeze frame” with exceptionally high resolution, which they can enlarge.

R. Clay Reed, a senior fellow at the Allen Institute and another senior fellow on the MICrONS project, says that prior to completing his research on the program, he might have thought that reconstruction of this level would not be possible.

Reed says that with machine learning, the process of turning two-dimensional brain circuits into three-dimensional models has become exponentially better. “It’s a fun combination of a very old field and a new approach to it,” he says.

Reid compared the new images to the first maps of the human genome because they provide fundamental knowledge for others to use. He imagines how they help others see structures and connections within the brain that were previously invisible.

“I see this as a start in many ways,” Reed says. “This data and these artificial intelligence-based reconstructions can be used by anyone with an Internet connection and a computer to ask an extraordinary range of questions about the brain.”