"Huge new dataset pushes limits of neuroscience":
At the Allen Institute, a nonprofit research institute started by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, they used six Neuropixels probes to record simultaneously from eight different regions of the mouse visual system. In August, the institute released data from 81 mice—comprising the activity of around 300,000 neurons. The data is freely available to any researchers who might want to use it.
As the largest data set of this kind ever collected—three times as big as the previous record holder—the release lets researchers observe enormous groups of neurons acting in concert. That unprecedented scale may unlock opportunities to understand parts of cognition that have previously evaded the scientific community’s grasp. “We want to understand how we think and see and make decisions,” says Shawn Olsen, an investigator at the Allen Institute who played a central role in the project. “And it just does not happen at the level of single neurons.”
The challenge now is figuring out just how to parse all that data...
