I've been editing this article about "brain mapping" and... connectomics, and I'm just stunned by how quickly the cost estimates to map, say, a mouse brain have plummeted in just the last couple years. It actually seems feasible that we could map the entire human brain -- all 86 billion neurons, and their connections -- in this lifetime. In the 1970s, Sydney Brenner started mapping all the connections between neurons in C. elegans. His team sliced the worm into thin pieces, took photos using an electron microscope, and manually traced and reconstructed each synapse for 302 neurons total. This project took more than a decade of work, and it cost about $16,500 to reconstruct each neuron. Scaling this up to a human brain boggles the mind. Electron microscopy remained the norm in connectomics for decades, because it was the only option available to see synapses at a resolution high enough to be able to trace their paths. Each electron microscope costs several hundreds of thousands of dollars, though, and you need lots of them to map even a mouse brain in a reasonable timeframe. In 2023, the Wellcome Trust released a report estimating how long, and how expensive, it would be to map the mouse connectome (~70M neurons). They estimated that imaging alone would cost $200-300M, and that proofreading (or ensuring that traces between neurons are correct) would cost $7-21 BILLION. (A human can only manually trace about 1 mm of neuron per hour.) Also, the images would occupy about 500 petabytes of data, and getting those data would require 20 electron microscopes running in parallel for about 5 years, continuously. They estimated the whole project would take about 17 years of work. This is, understandably, insane. But now it seems like there's an actual path toward mapping the full mouse brain in about five years for ~$100M dollars. There have been three major breakthroughs in the last year or so: 1/ Expansion microscopy, first developed in 2015, showed that it's possible to "enlarge" the brain by about 5x using a swellable polymer. But an improved method increases this number to >20x expansion, meaning we can now expand brains and image neurons much more easily using cheap light microscopes, rather than expensive electron ones. 2/ E11 Bio (a nonprofit research org) developed protein barcodes that get delivered into brain tissue; each neuron gets a unique combination of barcodes. These cells are then stained with colorful antibodies, which stick to a matching protein barcode, causing each neuron to light up in a distinct color. This makes tracing neurons so much easier. 3/ Google Research released PATHFINDER this May, an AI-based neuron tracing tool that can proofread about 67,200 cubic microns of brain tissue per hour, with very high accuracy. It works on electron micrographs, but something similar could be presumably be developed for the E11 / colorful tag approach. This is an extremely exciting time for neuroscience. (C. elegans connectome below.)show more

E11 Bio is excited to unveil PRISM technology for... mapping brain wiring with simple light microscopes. Today, brain mapping in humans and other mammals is bottlenecked by accurate neuron tracing. PRISM uses molecular ID codes and AI to help neurons trace themselves. We discovered a new cell barcoding approach exceeding comparable methods by more than 750x. This is the heart of PRISM. We integrated this capability with microscopy and AI image analysis to automatically trace neurons at high resolution and annotate them with molecular features. This is a key advance towards economically viable brain mapping - 95% of costs stem from neuron tracing. It is also an important step towards democratizing neuron tracing for everyday neuroscience. Solving these problems is critical for curing brain disorders, building safer and human-like AI, and even simulating brain function. In our first pilot study, we acquired a unique dataset in mouse hippocampus. Barcodes improved the accuracy of tracing genetically labelled neurons by 8x – with a clear path to 100x or more. They also permit tracing across spatial gaps – essential for mitigating tissue section loss in whole-brain scaling. Using molecular annotation, we uncover an intriguing feature of synaptic organization, demonstrating how PRISM can be used for systematic discovery 🧵show more

You’re looking at neurons growing and connecting in real... time 🧠. A 65-hour recording of hippocampal activity in a rat brain. The hippocampus plays a crucial role in memory and learning. In this footage, neurons extend their dendrites and axons, building and reshaping connections across days. Capturing this process live offers a rare view into how neural circuits form and reorganize. Why this matters ⬇️ 1️⃣It’s a continuous, multi-day recording of living hippocampal neurons under the microscope 2️⃣You can clearly see dendritic branching and network formation 3️⃣It reveals the dynamic processes that drive brain development and plasticity Observing growth at this resolution helps researchers understand how neurons connect—and how disruptions in these processes might contribute to neurological or psychiatric conditions. Credit to Louis Romet and Dr. Christophe Leterrier for the videoshow more

🚨 SCIENTISTS ARE USING AI TO MAP A HIDDEN... “CLEANING SYSTEM” INSIDE THE HUMAN BRAIN AND IT COULD CHANGE HOW WE UNDERSTAND SLEEP, AGING, AND NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE. It’s called the glymphatic system a vast network of fluid channels that flushes toxic waste from the brain while you sleep. For years it was almost impossible to observe in detail. Now AI-powered imaging is revealing it like a living galaxy of microscopic rivers and pathways inside neural tissue. Why this matters: Your brain produces toxic proteins constantly. The glymphatic system is one of its primary waste-clearance mechanisms clearing the very proteins linked to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases. But here’s the unsettling part: This cleaning system becomes dramatically less efficient with age, poor sleep, stress, and brain injury. Sleep may not just “rest” your mind it may literally wash your brain. The deeper implication is staggering: The brain isn’t just a computer. It’s a dynamic, living network that constantly rebuilds and cleanses itself in real time. The more we map it, the more it looks like an entire universe of connected energy flows inside our skulls. What if some neurological diseases begin when the brain can no longer properly “wash” itself at night? Follow for more frontier neuroscience and future technology.show more

Your every thought, memory, and movement begins here: an... electric spark turned chemical message, as one neuron whispers to the next. What you’re seeing This animation captures neurotransmission, the process that allows nerve cells to communicate across microscopic gaps called synapses. When an electrical impulse reaches the end of Cell A (the presynaptic neuron), it triggers the release of neurotransmitters—tiny signaling molecules that cross the synaptic cleft and bind to receptors on Cell B (the postsynaptic neuron). 🟡 Opens ion channels that generate a new electrical signal in the next neuron 🟡 Coordinates how the brain encodes movement, emotion, and thought 🟡 Operates on millisecond precision using hundreds of molecular components 💡 The bigger picture Neurotransmission is the foundation of consciousness, a seamless conversation of electricity and chemistry happening trillions of times each second. Every sensation, decision, and memory depends on this invisible dialogue between your brain’s 86 billion neurons.show more

"Explosion in Kharkiv" or something along those lines is... the most frequent post I make. I've probably made a thousand of them by now, if not more. Air raid alerts are so frequent here that I usually don't even post about them. They can last for days, and the citizens of Kharkiv are forced to disregard them. Or we can have twelve of them in a day, and we will also be forced to disregard them. I often see online how central or western Ukraine complains about the alerts, and oh, how much I would give to have an actual solid warning about an attack like them. But "explosions in Kharkiv" always arrive unexpectedly. How surreal it is that we are forced to live like this. How horrific it is that thousands of bombs, missiles, and drones fall on a major city in Europe daily, and all the major press and political figures just pretend it doesn't happen. Because if they admit that it happens and they just watch it year after year, then what kind of people are they? Do they care at all?show more

HTML Artifacts are a big part of how I... work with agents now. Artifacts can be more than just static files. When combined with agents, they can take action or help you take action. This unlocks all kinds of interesting ways to work with agents. This is clearly the future. Check out this writing and scheduler artifact I built in a few minutes. It uses a bit of HTML and JS. All the data is in markdown (Obsidian vaults), so the agent can access and modify it at any time. No DB needed. No sophisticated functionalities. The agent decides all that for me based on the skills, context, and memory it has access to. The best part about this simple stack is that all the important information stays with me. This has allowed me to build a recursive self-improving system and automations that can better tap into coding agents like Codex or Claude Code. I could have paid or built an entire app for scheduling posts, and there are so many of them out there. But I don't need to. I've realized a simple artifact does the job. And the simplicity of it is actually an advantage. Very little maintenance for very high returns on personalization, time, and efficiency. The other benefit of this is that I can add features as I please. That level of personalization feels magical, and we should all be pursuing more of it. All of this just keeps compounding. Of course, this example is just about writing. But I have similar artifacts for research, design, experimentation, evaluation, and so much more. And no, I didn't actually publish the post example I shared in the clip. It was just for demonstration purposes. I actually spend more time than this when writing together with agents. Lastly, having built my own agent orchestrator tool has made me realize that simplifying the tool stack is a superpower. If you are curious about how all this works, I will do a live session next week:show more

Researchers can freely access the Allen Mouse Brain Common... Coordinate Framework (v3), a complete and high-resolution 3D atlas of the mouse brain. Learn more about it at #SfN23show more

So, my opinion on what the Antarctic (Antarctica) Anomaly... is that it's a type of frequency technology. It must be way more powerful than HAARP, as many have claimed it to be, because we would see these anomalies at other HAARP sites, and we don't, not like this. With that said, and I'm very much trying to avoid letting what I want it to be not play a part here, I think it is a technology that is being used either off the coast of Antarctica itself or Bouvet Island. A third possibility is an area just to the northwest of the island that looks odd. It's possible it is a sonar scan from a ship, but why in that remote location? It looks like an antenna set up or rows of something that is out of place. I also believe that the weather events and fires that have taken place in Africa could possibly have been because of this. Each time we saw the anomaly, it was followed by a destructive weather event in Africa. A weird connection to that is we have been told and warned of a very busy 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. This is in part because of the above-average Atlantic ocean temperatures, which is the fuel to Hurricanes. With all this info, it's possible to see how the Anomaly could be a frequency tech that can manipulate or create weather, And or WARM up the Ocean temps to purposely enhance the Hurricane season and Storm growth. Keep in mind that many of our hurricanes and many of the biggest hurricanes have come from the west coast of Africa and form over the Cape Verde islands before heading towards the Caribbean and the United States. This is all of course speculation, and I'm learning many new things every day, so this idea may morph over time as we learn more. In the end, it is very hard to ignore all these findings. #antarctica #anonaly #AntarcticaAnomaly #BouvetIslandshow more

For most of neuroscience history (until the late 1980s/early... 1990s), neurons were treated as the brain’s only decision-makers. That idea is changing. Astrocytes, once considered passive support cells, are now recognized as global regulators of brain state. They don’t encode individual thoughts or actions. Instead, they integrate activity across huge numbers of synapses and adjust how neural networks behave over time. By releasing modulatory signals and tracking slow changes in activity, astrocytes influence: -Alertness vs. fatigue -Stress vs. calm -Motivation vs. disengagement Importantly, they can shift brain function without rewiring neurons, by tuning the environment neurons operate in. The brain isn’t just wired. It’s regulated, and astrocytes play a central role in that regulation.show more

Scientists are baffled by this. The Bacterial Flagellum is... composed of 20-30 unique parts. Combined, they total over 30,000 parts that make this little motor run. It can hit rotation speeds of up to 100,000 RPM, then stop & reverse direction in a quarter of a turn. It can propel a bacteria up to 20 lengths per second, which when scaled up is about equal to 225mph in a car. But this motor only works when all those parts are perfectly engineered and working together. Take away just one of those 30 pieces, and it stops functioning. That means it can't evolve gradually. None of the pieces do anything outside the system, and the system only works with all the pieces. Bacteria require this motor to move - without it, they would quickly die. How can anyone see something like and still deny that Life is Divinely Designed?show more

An interesting issue with Tesla Robotaxi where it took... us to a Starbucks, but the Google data had the incorrect location. At drop off we were 0.2 miles from the Starbucks, so we had a short walk. Is there a way the Tesla AI team could add functionality in the app so riders can update map info to correct errors or inaccuracies on the underlying map data and then this propagates to the fleet? Being able to do this with a pin drop on the map instead of having to use an address might make this very easy and user friendly! Or, as a bigger ask, would it be possible for the car to be able to use visual images on its own to look for a Starbucks sign and on the fly, get us closer and update the map data on its own?show more

This shit have been in my brain for the... last 10 hours and i don't know how to feel about itshow more

Big news! Today we are announcing that Shopify is... acquiring the Threads team. There are a million feelings and thoughts from this journey, but nothing more than gratitude to all of our users and customers for building with us, my colleagues (both current and former) for making all of this possible, our investors, especially Mike Vernal, Elad Gil, Avichal - Electric ϟ Capital, and Jessica Verrilli for their unwavering support and guidance, and all of our friends and family who put up with the late nights, canceled plans, and the general roller coaster that is startup life. To our customers and users who have been asking, here’s how we got here: The past several months have been some of the most interesting and intense of my life. It all started with the rise of Instagram Threads, which presented us with the opportunity to sell our domains. Around the same time, a handful of companies approached us, wondering if we would be open to an acquisition. When this happened in the past, we would politely decline. However, this time, things were different. We weren't that excited about the time it would take to invest in a rebrand, and with mind-warping technological advances now being a commodity, we were excited about joining a place where we could tinker at scale. Each company we chatted with was incredible. However, what ultimately led us to choose Shopify over others was their culture; two distinct things in particular: 1) Craft-obsessed. Their obsession with not just building the right thing, but also building it the right way is inspiring. Sacrifice shows priority, and hearing stories about some of the hard decisions they made to ensure that what they ship is robust, scalable, and trustworthy, even at the cost of short-term metric gains, really proved that their obsession with craft was much more than a feel-good slogan. Their discussions and decisions have me truly believing they're going to be around for 100 years. 2) For entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. Just about every product and engineering leader I met was an ex-founder who grinded for years to turn nothing into something. They all still had that air of resilience, obsession with the details at every part of the stack, and a compelling vision of the future for whatever they were working on. Threads leadership is also made up of ex-founders, so the entrepreneurial focus at Shopify made it clear that it would be the best environment for us to grow and thrive. Very excited for this next chapter with the team and grateful for all of the support we’ve received over the years from those who believed in us. As always, thanks for (th) reading.show more

This is not what we Ukrainians would want to... see from our windows in winter. It would be better if the voices and laughter of children making snowmen or playing snowballs echoed from the courtyards of residential areas. One could step out onto the balcony and watch that very scene while sipping a warm tea or coffee, rather than the sights we see now. You cannot distract yourself from thoughts of the war for long; it continues, and everything around us tries to remind us of that. Over the years, the brain tries to pretend it has adapted to everything happening around it - to what the ears hear and the eyes see, to the various situations that occur here every day. But sanity is always on guard, and an inner voice says without words: this is not a normal life for a human being; if only everything could return to the way it was before. But is it even possible to return to the life we had, carrying such an experience on our shoulders? … Now, in the "points of warmth," you can see beds. You might ask: are these for overnight stays? The beds are intended for people who need assistance in the event of an emergency or for medical reasons, as well as for temporary rest if a person is in need of it… but people are still forced to return to their apartments.show more

💜 One Last Update! 💜 Last week when we... were in Minnesota for Clark’s 6-month follow-up for his clinical trial, of all the tests they ran, the one we were both most anxious and most eager to see results from was his brain MRI. For children with untreated Sanfilippo Type A, it’s typical to see 2–5% loss of brain volume each year, along with enlargement of the ventricles (the fluid-filled spaces in the brain). This is one of the most heartbreaking parts of the disease — watching the brain slowly lose tissue and function over time. We were so nervous that Clark’s MRI might show some loss compared to his baseline scan 6 months ago. But the results came back and… ✨ ZERO change. ✨ His brain volume and ventricle size were completely stable — no loss at all. This is such an incredible sign that the treatment may be doing exactly what it’s meant to: clearing the toxic waste from his brain cells and protecting his brain from further damage. If feel that it is SO important for us to share these results as they come because people need to be FULLY aware that these treatments that are out there WORK. These children with Sanfilippo do not need to regress and they DEFINITELY do not have to have their lives cut short. We just need the FDA to say yes. We are so close to a reality where Sanfilippo syndrome is as manageable as a disease like diabetes. P.S. Enjoy this video of our little sunshine having the best time singing!show more

While I have premium I definitely want to do... a long post breaking down the main scene from this show that I obsess with. There's so much that I feel could be learned from it. Not just for expansion animators either. There's honestly a LOT that can be learned from how this show directed its expansion scenes that can be applied to even safe for work animations. Obviously yes, the expansion alone is really good. What makes it so good though is just the fact that there's things you pick up on that you likely don't even realize until you re-watch. I'm using this scene as an example as it's not AS good I would say, but it still has a lot going for it. One thing I've always loved from it that I want to use in my own animations someday is that the expansion sort of comes in waves as opposed to one consistent growth. In a way, it makes it feel more natural while also selling how tight the top is getting. It could have been accompanied by showing the knot getting tighter or smaller with each growth. It's a small part of the animation but just that one thing already adds another layer to appreciate. It's not like most expansion scenes where there's very little outside of just "growing" on its own. There's a bunch of little things that subtly improve it without being obnoxious. The first expansion scene has WAY more that I want to talk about honestly. Far more than this one has. It will probably be a really long post now that I think about it...show more

The cycle of life, every instant, in your mitochondria.... The major electron carrier in mitochondria is NAD+. When it collects an electron from the food you eat, NAD+ is converted into NADH. NADH then feeds the electron to the electron transport chain so the electron can flow to oxygen - the ultimate electron acceptor. How easily electrons make their way to oxygen determines energy resistance (éR) following the energy resistance principle (ERP) Mitochondrial matrix and cell cytoplasm are two different "sealed" compartments, but there is a special system that connects the NAD+/NADH pools between mito and cytoplasm: the Malate-Aspartate shuttle The Malate-Aspartate shuttle shown below is how NADH from the cytoplasm (made by glycolysis) is carried into mitochondria. The electron transport chain can then regenerate NAD+ by respiring the flowing electron. Everywhere in biology: energy transfer. Sometimes without molecular carriers. Here with a number of enzymatic intermediates, creating an integrated electrical circuit. The circuit is in service of the flowing electron looking for a place to rest. Getting back onto oxygen to become H2O (water) again, as it was initially before getting ripped off by light energy and stuck onto a carbon backbone in a green leaf. Animation by Janet Iwasa labshow more

World Models are the path for some AI Models... in the future. But how can we efficiently train these models to not only see the world the way humans do but to see the world in a new and unique way. By visualizing, what is normally sequenced audio patterns, we can derive much more insights. Here we see Paganini in a visual form that can than be described and transcribed into a World Model. We can observe connections in a manner that may not have been clear prior to the digitalization of music and sound in this way. The company with the most valuable potential in building a World Model is Tesla. Not that this type of visualization is being used, but that the mechanisms are in place, and the technology is in place for the company to thrive in this new form of AI.show more