Narayanan Kasthuri

Narayanan Kasthuri, an Indian American assistant professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago, is leading unprecedented research of brain cells. ( photo)

An Indian American assistant professor of neurobiology and researcher at the University of Chicago’s Argonne project is leading research into mapping billions of brain cells.

Scientists at the university and Argonne National Laboratory, including Prof. Narayanan Kasthuri, are combining new techniques in microscopy, neurobiology and computing to reveal the brain’s inner mechanisms in unprecedented detail, the university said in a report.



A complete map of these connections would be nothing less than the largest dataset ever created. But within that massive inventory could lie answers to some of the most elusive scientific questions: the fundamental rules of cognition, explanations for many mental illnesses, even the biological factors that separate humans from other animals, the report went on.

“It’s a huge theory of neuroscience that all of our behaviors, all of our pathologies, all of our illnesses, all of the learning that we do, is all due to changes in the connections between brain cells,” said Kasthuri, assistant professor of neurobiology at the university and neuroscience researcher at Argonne, in the report.





“At most other universities, I’d just have to give up this idea,” Kasthuri said in the report. “Even a small part of a brain I could never map, because even 1 percent of a mouse brain is something like 1,000 terabytes of data. No other university in the world, I think, could conceivably handle that.”

To reduce this complexity into more practical science, Kasthuri is starting small, the university noted.


“I think the only way we’re going to understand the brain is by comparing it to other things,” he added in the report.

Beyond the age curve of learning, such a study could also address fundamental questions about how the adult brain is built, the report said.

The near-term benefits of brain mapping will be to equip scientists studying more elemental links between brain and behavior with a deeper understanding of the organ’s complex mechanical structure, the university report added.

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