{"id":12407,"date":"2017-01-26T11:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/?p=12407"},"modified":"2017-01-26T17:46:30","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T17:46:30","slug":"new-neuroscience-tools-for-team-science-in-big-data-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/2017\/01\/26\/new-neuroscience-tools-for-team-science-in-big-data-era\/","title":{"rendered":"New neuroscience tools for team science in \u2018big data\u2019 era"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Esther Landhuis<\/em><\/p>\n

Wandering the convention center among 30,000-plus researchers, students and vendors at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego last November, I struggled to wrap my head around a feature<\/a> I was writing for this week\u2019s Nature<\/em>, on managing big brain data. Mice, molecular biology and cell sorting reigned supreme in my former life as a bench scientist. Neurons, brain imaging, terabytes \u2014 not so much. So when it came time to find an entry into the vast universe of the brain, I latched onto something that seemed small and manageable: the fruit fly.<\/p>\n

Ann-Shyn Chiang of National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, told the SFN crowd<\/a> his team has spent a decade imaging 60,000 neurons in the Drosophila<\/em> brain. The pictures produced 3D maps<\/a> detailed enough to show which neurons control precise behaviors, such as shaking the head side to side (see video). But here\u2019s the part that blew my mind: They aren\u2019t even halfway done (flies have 135,000 brain neurons), and mapping the human brain with similar methods would take 17 million years!<\/p>\n