A digital reconstruction of the brain's power source

© 2021 EPFL - Blue Brain Project - The EPFL Blue Brain Project has created the first digital reconstruction of the Neuro-Glia-Vascular Architecture providing a new framework to study brain function in health and disease. The study, published in Cerebral Cortex, represents a major milestone: researchers can now reconstruct the architecture of non-neuronal entities such as blood vessels and the supporting cells called glia. These reconstructions of the brain tissue provide a sub-micron precise framework needed to simulate the molecular interactions relevant to understanding how neurons are supported and nurtured. As you read this article, your brain is engaging neurons and glia to process the information. This eventually increases the demand for neuronal metabolic energy leading to increased production of energy and local changes in the diameter of the proximal vessels to balance out this demand. The complex structural organization of the two dominant cell classes in the brain, neurons and glia, which play a role in these effects, is known as the Neuronal-Glial-Vascular (NGV) system. Now, for the first time, Blue Brain scientists have digitally reconstructed the architecture of this system including neurons, glia and blood vessels.