Stunning Brain Map Reveals Tiny Communication Network | National Geographic

most people are familiar with the idea
of Google Maps this is a similar scheme
looking at brain at progressively higher
magnifications we’re now looking at a
slab that’s about a tenth of a
millimeter in height of a small piece of
brain where some of those nerve cells
they’re now all kind of pink in color
are interposed with blood vessels and
then a bunch of other things these
yellowish objects are the processes that
come off of nerve cells called dendrites
these are the antennas of nerve cells
that receive information now looking at
a box that’s 10 microns which is about a
hundredth of a millimeter in height and
now you see that even between the
dendrites of cells which are labeled
yellow there are lots of other things
that are labeled blue which are the
axons of nerve cells from other parts of
the brain that happened to be trying to
make connections with the nerve cells
the dendrites we’re going to zoom up by
another factor of 3 in this box now we
finally see the places where the axons
of some cells are beginning to
communicate with the dendrites of other
cells and axons and dendrites talk to
each other through synapses synapses are
where axons of some neurons are making
connections with the dendrites of other
cells and the way axons tell dendrites
things is by releasing neurotransmitter
packets that have hundreds or thousands
of neurotransmitter molecules these
little packets are called synaptic
vesicles and they’re labeled here as
little yellow spheres the brain is made
up of trillions of these synapses one of
our goals is to try to get some sense of
what kinds of organizational principles
emerge looking at the brain at the level
of resolution of seeing every single
synapse
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