About
The NIH Human Connectome Project is an ambitious effort to map the neural pathways that underlie human brain function. The overarching purpose of the Project is to acquire and share data about the structural and functional connectivity of the human brain. It will greatly advance the capabilities for imaging and analyzing brain connections, resulting in improved sensitivity, resolution, and utility, thereby accelerating progress in the emerging field of human connectomics.
Altogether, the Human Connectome Project will lead to major advances in our understanding of what makes us uniquely human and will set the stage for future studies of abnormal brain circuits in many neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Consortia
The sixteen institutes and centers of the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience have funded two major grants that will take complementary approaches to deciphering the brain's amazingly complex wiring diagram.
The WU-Minn Project
An 11-institution consortium led by Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota received a 5-year grant to enable development and utilization of advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) methods to chart brain circuitry.
- 1,200 healthy adults (twins and their non-twin siblings) will be scanned on a customized 3T scanner using diffusion imaging, resting-state fMRI, and task-fMRI.
- 200 subjects will also be imaged at ultra-high field strengths (7T and/or 10.5T).
- 100 subjects will be studied using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and EEG.
- Connectivity patterns revealed by MR imaging of brain structure and function will be combined with behavioral testing and genotyping.
- Sophisticated data analysis and visualization capabilities will enable extensive data mining of these freely available datasets.
A consortium led by Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California at Los Angeles received a grant to enable building and refining a next-generation 3T MR scanner that improves the quality and spatial resolution with which brain connectivity data can be acquired at this field strength.