Do-It-Yourself Brain Slicing
Ken Hayworth’s machine can automatically slice 2,000,000 cross-sections of a brain, generating 10 quadrillion voxels (10,000,000,000,000,000) of raw image data – enough to finally map the brain’s neuorocircuitry. (”Bulk imaging of such a large volume at the highest resolution would take hundreds of years, but having the ultrathin sections laid bare on a set of tissue plates solves this problem.”)
But his idea suffered rejections from both neuroscientists and graduate schools, “either because he didn’t have the academic background they were expecting, or because the professors wanted a lab slave and not someone with his own plans…”
After his second year of grad school, Hayworth built a brain-slicing prototype that attracted the interest of a Harvard professor interested in high-throughput neural circuit mapping. Together they submitted a proposal to the McKnight Endowment Fund, and finally won a $200,000 grant and a chance to work at the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University…
