Mind Mapper

Our team is working on an exciting project to understand how the brain is wired! We want to discover how the cells in the brain, called neurons, connect and communicate with each other. By using the latest technology, we hope to create a detailed map of these connections. This research is part of a big effort by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called the BRAIN Initiative.

To do our research, we use special imaging techniques to take pictures of the brain. One of the biggest challenges we face is figuring out what these images show. We need to carefully study and label, or "annotate," the brain pictures to understand them better. This takes a lot of time and effort. By analyzing these images, we can learn more about the brain’s pathways and how information moves from one place to another. The more we learn, the closer we get to solving mysteries about how our brains work and what happens when things go wrong, like in diseases that affect thinking and memory.

Now, for the first time on Zooniverse, you can be part of this amazing project! We have created a brand-new 3D viewer that lets you explore real brain images in three dimensions. You can help by identifying and labeling actual brain connections! By joining this project, you will contribute to real science and help researchers make incredible discoveries about the brain.

This project is approved by the University of Minnesota’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and follows all federal animal welfare guidelines. Learn more about why and how animal research is conducted here. This project operates under Animal Welfare Assurance number D16-00288 (A3456-01), which ensures compliance with the policies described by the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.

Overall our project will use existing brain imaging data collected at the University of Minnesota under the above mentioned approved research protocols. This means no new animal experiments are being performed specifically for this Zooniverse project. For initial calibration data, we are using publicly available products from this site. We are looking to you, our volunteers, to help us turn existing data into new discoveries about the inner workings of our brains🧠!