2021 Preprint Highlights

• Massive data feat: Took a 1 mm³ piece of human temporal cortex, sliced into ~5,000 ultrathin sections, imaged it via multi-beam EM and flooded the 3D volume—yielding ~57,000 cells and ~134 million synapses reconstructed from ~1.4 PB of data.

• Rare neuronal structures: Discovered unusual axon “whorls” forming inhibitory synapses on cell bodies—biological oddities that might be pathology-related or simply understudied normal variants.

Source: biorxiv.org, researchgate.net, scispace.com, thetimes.com

2024 Science Paper Progress

• Full peer-reviewed upgrade: Published in Science, same team produced the first petavoxel (~1.4 PB) human cortex reconstruction—labeling 57k+ cells and 150M synapses.

• Deeper insights: Classified not just cells, but vessels and synapses; flagged rare yet potent axonal patterns (up to ~50 synapses on a single axon), and made datasets freely accessible online.

Source: smithsonianmag.com, apnews.com, science.org, technologynetworks.com

What’s Next?

• Scaling to mouse hippocampus: Team is already applying their EM + AI pipeline to a region ~10–15× larger than the H01 volume—from plans reported by Technology Networks and Science News

• Goals for future human data: More human cortical regions are reportedly in the pipeline—stepwise toward a multimodal, multi-sample atlas

Source: research.google, blog.google

Prediction:
In the next year we’ll probably see:

• A massive mouse hippocampal connectome (10s of PB), revealing memory-related network motifs.
• Follow-up human cortex volumes—likely with richer metadata (e.g. neuron types, synapse physiology).
• Open-access tools—so that the community can explore 3D nanoscale human brain wiring.

Bottom Line:
From pioneering 1 mm³ human cortex reconstructions, the team is now gearing up to build even bolder connectomic resources—mouse hippocampus next, then more human datasets. For mind-upload aficionados, that’s progress toward increasingly detailed, brain-scale wiring maps—early tools for understanding and perhaps emulating human thought.