Slicing Mickey's Mind For Science

04:42

January 04, 2011

A 3D rendering of a magnified tiny section of a mouse brain. To see how small an area Lichtman typically studies, click the image. (courtesy Jeff Lichtman)

This is a small section of a mouse brain. The tiny red dot pictured shows the 3D cube in the previous frame. (courtesy Jeff Lichtman)

A mouse's brain weighs about .02 oz, compared to the three pound human brain. (twoshortplanks/Flickr) — A mouse's brain weighs about .02 oz, compared to the three-pound human brain. (twoshortplanks/Flickr)

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Dr. Jeff Lichtman wants to know what's going on inside your head.

Lichtman and his Harvard research team are on the cutting edge - quite literally - of the emerging field of connectomics.

They are taking impossibly-thin slices of a mouse's brain and photographing them in an electron microscope to create a three-dimensional, neuron-by-neuron map of the mind. The undertaking, which will take years, has been compared to the human genome project.

This segment aired on January 4, 2011.