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USA Today
10-04-2025
- Science
- USA Today
A mouse watched YouTube. Then scientists mapped a tiny piece of its brain.
A mouse watched YouTube. Then scientists mapped a tiny piece of its brain. Scientists say the map of a speck of a mouse's brain could be as transformative as the Human Genome Project. Here's what to know. Show Caption Hide Caption Dire wolves extinct for 13,000 years recreated from ancient DNA Colossal, a Texas-based biotech company, revealed that it successfully recreated extinct dire wolves. Scientists created the largest functional map of a brain to date using a piece of a mouse's brain. The map details the wiring that connects neurons, offering insight into brain function and organization. Researchers believe this work could eventually lead to treatments for brain disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and schizophrenia. Scientists have achieved a feat once believed impossible, constructing the largest functional map of a brain to date, which they believe could eventually lead to the discovery of medications for hard-to-treat brain disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Using a piece of a mouse's brain no larger than a grain of sand, scientists from across three institutions created a detailed diagram of the wiring that connects neurons as they send messages through the brain. The project, called Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks (MICrONS), offers unprecedented insight into the brain's function and organization that could help unlock the secrets of intelligence. David Markowitz, a scientist who helped coordinate the project, said the data, published April 9 in the journal Nature marks 'a watershed moment for neuroscience, comparable to the Human Genome Project in their transformative potential.' If you give a mouse YouTube In the study, scientists looked at a small piece of the mouse's brain called the neocortex, which receives and processes visual information. It's the newest part of the brain in terms of evolution, and differentiates the brains of mammals from other animals, according to researchers. A team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston started by recording brain activity in a portion of the mouse's visual cortex roughly the size of a grain of salt while it watched a series of YouTube clips and movies. Scientists at the Allen Institute, a research center in Seattle, then sliced that piece of the mouse's brain into more than 25,000 layers, each a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair, and took high resolution photos of the slices through microscopes. The material was sent to a team at Princeton University, in New Jersey, which used artificial intelligence to reconstruct the pieces in 3D. Other scientists compared their approach to understanding a car's combustion engine. 'Just as an engine is composed of pistons, cylinders and a fuel system, the brain consists of neurons and synapses – the tiny, specialized connections at which neurons communicate,' two Harvard researchers wrote in a companion piece to the Nature article. The data set from the research contains 84,000 neurons, 500 million synapses and neuronal wiring that could extend the length of New York's Central Park nearly one and a half times, molecular biologists Mariela Petkova and Gregor Schuhknecht wrote. Findings from the studies have led to discoveries of new cell types, characteristics and ways to classify cells, researchers said. The achievement also puts scientists closer to their larger goal of mapping the wiring of the entire brain of a mouse. 'Inside that tiny speck is an entire architecture like an exquisite forest,' Clay Reid, a senior investigator who helped pioneer this area of study, said in a statement. 'It has all sorts of rules of connections that we knew from various parts of neuroscience, and within the reconstruction itself, we can test the old theories and hope to find new things that no one has ever seen before.' Why it matters Researchers view wiring diagrams as a foundational step that scientists can build on and, eventually, potentially use to find treatments for brain conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and schizophrenia. They compare the studies to the Human Genome Project, which created the first complete map of the DNA in every human cell. The Human Genome Project has led to profound advances in drug discovery, treatments and disease screenings and helped pave the way for revolutionary gene therapies to treat certain diseases, including some cancers. With a functional map of the brain, researchers say they now have the ability to understand the brain's form and function and have opened up new pathways to study intelligence. Nuno da Costa, an associate investigator at the Allen Institute, described the data they collected as a 'kind of Google map' of the piece of the visual cortex. 'If you have a broken radio and you have the circuit diagram, you'll be in a better position to fix it,' he said in a statement. 'In the future, we can use this to compare the brain wiring in a healthy mouse to the brain wiring in a model of disease.'
USA Today
09-04-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump is right to tariff these pro-DEI penguins. Do dire wolves next.
Trump is right to tariff these pro-DEI penguins. Do dire wolves next. | Opinion Trump has made clear that wokeness is dead in America. Well, few have flaunted destructive diversity, equity and inclusion policies more than penguins. So they must face tariffs. Show Caption Hide Caption Dire wolves extinct for 13,000 years recreated from ancient DNA Colossal, a Texas-based biotech company, revealed that it successfully recreated extinct dire wolves. Of all the tariffs President Donald Trump has rolled out, my favorite – and I do love them all, just like I'm going to love patriotically paying $579 for a new phone charger – are those slapped on the penguins of the unpopulated Heard and McDonald Islands. Since taking office, Trump has made clear that "wokeness" is dead and America will no longer be taken advantage of on the global stage. Well, few have flaunted destructive diversity, equity and inclusion policies more than penguins. For starters, they are black and white simultaneously. They sometimes form same-sex couples, like I read about in the children's book 'And Tango Makes Three,' which I'm trying to get banned from my local school district even though I don't have children. According to PBS, which I hope President Trump defunds because it shares overtly sexual information about penguins, 'Some female penguins may have one to three partners in one season and some males may have one or two partners.' Penguins are dangerously pro-DEI, and they must be tariffed And, perhaps worst of all, a group of penguins in the water is called a raft, while a group of penguins on land is called a waddle. YOU GET ONE GROUP NAME, PENGUINS, MAKE UP YOUR MINDS! These vulgar, flightless birds present a clear danger to the minds of America's children, so the 10% tariff Trump hit them with is more than appropriate. All the penguins have to do is stop being woke and the tariffs will (maybe) go away. Opinion: Trump is intentionally murdering the stock market. Imagine if Biden did that. On Sunday, CNN host and noted penguin sympathizer Jake Tapper interviewed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and said, 'The Heard and McDonald Islands have zero human inhabitants. They had zero exports. They had zero imports. They do have a lot of penguins. Why are you putting import tariffs on islands that are entirely populated by penguins?' Rollins smartly responded, 'I mean, come on, whatever. Listen, the people that are leading this are serious, intentional, patriotic.' Penguins give us nothing. Of course, Trump should slap tariffs on them. That's right. These serious, intentional and patriotic people know that filthy, amoral foreign penguins deserve to be smacked with harsh tariffs. It shows the American people the Trump administration knows exactly what it's doing and is in no way run by dozens of children standing on each other's shoulders wearing trench coats so they look like adults. Besides, what does America get from these stupid penguins? Nothing. The Heard and McDonald Islands, which, if you believe in 'maps,' are located somewhere between South Africa and Australia, have never once sent us a package of succulent penguin meat. Liberals will argue that's because no humans live there, and penguins aren't good at harvesting and shipping their own meat. But that's the kind of lazy thinking that made us suckers in the global trade order. Opinion: My Rihanna bra haul tells you all you need to know about Trump's tariffs Trump's tariff plan is going well and everyone loves him and thinks he's doing a fantastic job, with the exception of the leaders and residents of every other country on earth, U.S. consumers who are about to see Amazon prices rise astronomically and anyone who was hoping to retire within the next decade or so. As Rollins told CNN: Whatever. Dire wolves must also be subject to stiff Trumpian tariffs While we're on the subject of smart policies, I'm hopeful the Trump administration will swiftly move to put tough tariffs on dire wolves. As you might have heard, three of the previously extinct Ice Age predators were recently resurrected by the Dallas-based company Colossal Biosciences, using DNA from ancient bones. The dire wolf puppies may appear adorable and reminiscent of the loyal creatures from 'Game of Thrones,' but their days of taking advantage of America should be over. We have a sharp trade deficit with dire wolves, in that we give them the privilege of no longer being extinct, and probably some food, and they give us nothing but a sense of wonderment and perhaps a mild fear that this all is going to go terribly, terribly wrong. Tariff the dire wolves, President Trump. They, like the penguins, need to learn who's boss. Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at
