It is exciting to start seeing results of the worldwide push to understand and map the complexity of the brain in order to both better understand what makes us human and to pave the way for treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases. As a neuroscientist, it is fantastic to start seeing so much data come through, characterizing the remarkable diversity of cells in the human brain. We still have a long way to go for a complete brain map. For example, the paper by Siletti and colleagues identified hundreds of clusters of cells based on their gene expression profiles, but these cells all came from only three people. There is likely diversity in brain cells induced by our genetic background, lifestyle, and age, so expanding these maps to include more brain donors will be important in the future.
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University of Edinburgh
It is exciting to start seeing results of the worldwide push to understand and map the complexity of the brain in order to both better understand what makes us human and to pave the way for treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases. As a neuroscientist, it is fantastic to start seeing so much data come through, characterizing the remarkable diversity of cells in the human brain. We still have a long way to go for a complete brain map. For example, the paper by Siletti and colleagues identified hundreds of clusters of cells based on their gene expression profiles, but these cells all came from only three people. There is likely diversity in brain cells induced by our genetic background, lifestyle, and age, so expanding these maps to include more brain donors will be important in the future.
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