On March 31, 2022, Nature Neuroscience published an online cover story by Chinese scientists on the high-resolution projectome of neural connectomes of the mouse brain. The study reported the first release of a whole-brain projectome comprising 6,357 single neurons in the mouse prefrontal cortex (PFC), making it the largest database of a whole-brain, single-neuron mouse projectome to date.

The study, titled “Single-neuron projectome of mouse prefrontal cortex,” was a collaboration between the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, among others. It provided a structural basis for the

neural mechanisms of high-level PFC cognitive functions and laid the foundation for future research on whole-brain mesoscopic connectomes in model organisms.

The study identified 64 projectome-defined neuron subtypes in the mouse PFC and their spatial organization, the modularity and hierarchy of intra-PFC connectivity, and the correspondence between transcriptome-defined and projectome-defined neuron

subtypes. It shed light on the laws of internal connections and external projections of the prefrontal cortex and proposed a plausible working model of the prefrontal cortex.

Whole-brain projection of 195 neurons of the mouse prefrontal cortex

Source: www.cast.org.cn