I'm trying to introduce the study
of the brain to a bunch of students.
I said "Ifunderstanding everything
you needed to know about the brain is a mile"
I asked the students,
"how far have we walked in this mile?"
I got answers.
Three-quarters of a mile, half a mile.
Someone said a quarter mile.
And I said, I think about three inches.
This is unconventional science.
There's just this huge gap in our knowledge
about how brains work, partially
because we have no idea
what they actually are made up of
at the finest level.
When it comes to the nervous system,
there are a large number of diseases
where the only real sign that
there's something wrong
is the outward manifestation of the disease.
A person is acting crazy
or they don't seem to learn very well,
or their movements are disordered in some way.
But if you look at their brain,
most of the techniques we have,
there's nothing to see.
You've got to see the wires.
You just have to see them.
And you have to see where they come from,
where they go, what they connect with
and be able to map that out in enough detail
that ultimately you will be able
to render the information
that goes into a brain
to see the wiring diagram
at the resolution
of every single synaptic vesicle
in every synapse.
Enough resolution so that we can see
everything in a wiring diagram.
I'm a lab head of a group of people
who work together.
It's kind of a shifting group of people.
But it's difficult work
and it requires many kinds of experts.
So, there are lots of people
working together on this project.
What we're trying to understand
is how cells in the brain
communicate with each other.
I have to look at the entire pipeline
from the beginning
where we start with a mouse.
Make a sample.
Process the tissue.
Cut sections.
And then ultimately begin imaging them.
The slice is like you're cutting
in a loaf of bread except you're trying
to slice very thin pieces of tissue.
So, for a millimeter depth,
you get about 33,000 sections.
Each section of the brain
is next to the section
that was sliced just before it
and the slice right after it
is the next frame.
And if you play these frames in sequence,
you see the brain not overtime,
but over space
as if you're looking deeper
and deeper into the brain.
The big objects you see that appear
and then slowly go out of appearance.
Those are nerve cells
that are being cut through.
And coming off of these cells
are these large light colored objects,
which are the dendrites.
Every little object in here
is a little wire to keep track of these cells
from one section to another.
What you'd like to do
is kind of colorthem in.
So, every one of these colors
have no meaning other than to keep track
of each object from section to section.
What this allows us to do
is to generate a wiring diagram
based on this.
We now know everything
about these wires here and from that,
we can generate all the connections
of every cell in that area.
Information forces you
into this uncomfortable position,
where you have to kind of say,
"Okay. I don't get it,
but I know that the real world
is more complicated than the way
I'm thinking about it."
I feel it's a very long road
and we've just started.
That's my view.