Scientists say an artificial intelligence program that they compare to ChatGPT has helped them create one of the most detailed maps of the mouse brain to date, with 1,300 regions and subregions marked on the map.
Some of those subregions have never been charted before — and the researchers say there’s more to come. “I think there are already indications that we can go beyond what we see now,” said Bosiljka Tasic, director of molecular genetics at Seattle’s Allen Institute for Brain Science.
The mapping effort, led by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco and the Allen Institute, is detailed in a study published today in the journal Nature Communications.
“Our model is built on the same powerful technology as AI tools like ChatGPT,” senior author Reza Abbasi-Asl, a neuroscientist at UCSF, said in a news release. “Both are built on a ‘transformer’ network which excels at understanding context.”
That context could be important for treating neurological ailments, Tasic told me. “Location is everything in the brain,” she said. “Defining the geography of the brain, and then defining all these regions and their functions, not only leads to better understanding, but also better ability to treat.”
