China Focus: Chinese-led international team releases landmark findings on mesoscale brain mapping research

BEIJING -- A team of Chinese scientists, in collaboration with international researchers, has achieved a breakthrough in brain mapping, with ten seminal studies on mesoscale brain atlases published as a featured collection of papers in Cell Press journals on Thursday.

Brain atlas research aims to decode the neural network basis underlying perception, movement, learning, memory, and decision-making by constructing precise "brain maps" that enable the accurate localization of various types of neural cells and their network connectivity patterns.

By integrating advanced high-resolution brain imaging, spatial transcriptomic analysis, and AI technologies, the research team has successfully constructed comprehensive mesoscale brain atlases covering multiple species at single-cell resolution.

The ten related studies were published in leading journals, including Cell and Neuron, demonstrating China's growing expertise and international leadership in mesoscale brain mapping research.

"Our research has successfully extended brain mapping from rodents to primates," said Muming Poo, scientific director of the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CEBSIT).

"Primate brains are significantly more complex than those of rodents," Poo noted, adding that the research team has conducted in-depth analyses of brain cell types, neural connectivity patterns, developmental and evolutionary characteristics, as well as molecular mechanisms of brain disorders in macaques and other species. "This represents a crucial milestone in our research."

The newly published collection encompasses key species from reptiles and birds to rodents, non-human primates, and humans. By integrating multi-omics data, including transcriptomics and connectomics, these resources significantly expanded the international brain atlas database for cross-species comparisons and spatiotemporal changes of cell types and neuronal connections during development and evolution.

"These achievements depended on several innovations in brain mapping technologies developing in our participating Chinese institutions," said Sun Yangang, a leading investigator of CEBSIT.

"These include two sets of technical advances: one in single-cell spatial transcriptomics of large tissue samples of the primate brain, which is critical for cell typing in normal and diseased brains, and second, the capability of acquisition of submicron-resolution images of neuronal connections and high-throughput 3D reconstructions of axon morphologies as well as data compilation and analysis," Sun said.

The series of achievements were accomplished by over 300 scientists, including researchers from the CEBSIT, Suzhou Institute for Brainsmatics under the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, BGI Research Institute and other Chinese research institutions, as well as researchers from France, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

"Primate brain mapping research is characterized by long time required data acquisition and the staggering volume of data to be stored and analyzed," Poo said. "We call for sustained global scientific collaboration to collectively advance toward the rather ambitious goal of deciphering mesoscale brain atlases of primate brains, including the human brain."