When access to the institute was interrupted some time ago, "I learned how much we've come to depend upon this," Barres said.
"Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows just came pouring into my office, worried that they had been cut off," he said. "We can't imagine life without this tool anymore."
Allen donated $100 million to start the lab in 2003 and the mouse brain atlas cost $41 million, well under the $50 million that had been budgeted, Jones said.
The next project, Jones said, will be to develop a digital, three-dimensional, interactive map of the genes at work in a human brain's neocortex, the outer layer that is the seat of higher thought and emotion, using brains from cadavers as well as tissue removed during brain surgeries.
Scientists hope the brain-mapping research eventually will lead to new discoveries on brain function and disorders such as MS, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, epilepsy, schizophrenia and addiction, to cite just a few.
"There's been a lot of progress in understanding how the brain develops," Barres said. "The next frontier is figuring out the circuitry and how it actually works."
