Three-Dimensional Structure of Synapses in the Brain and on the Web

The anatomical database that describes the neural networks of the brain will eventually contain sufficient detail to identify all neurons and the individual synapses between them. One approach to obtaining this level of detail is to reconstruct brain volumes from serial electron microscopic sections. Current techniques allow the creation of relatively small ultrastructural volumes, but these contain an enormous wealth of data. Many different kinds of data, including neuron membrane structure, synaptic connectivity, organelle distributions, etc., can be extracted from a single database using this representation. The ultimate size of the ultrastructural database of the brain depends on the advancement of techniques for data creation as well as the development of informatics tools for ultrastructural data mining.