--- title: The Brain in 3D: New Model Details the Human Brain Down to its Cells description: BigBrain, a 3D digital reconstruction of a human brain, provides a first-ever high resolution view of the inner workings of the human brain that could... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7135928/the-brain-in-3d-new-model-details-the-human-brain-down-to-its-cells/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-06-20T18:01:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T09:58:07.298Z article:section: Health og:title: The Brain in 3D: New Model Details the Human Brain Down to its Cells og:description: BigBrain, a 3D digital reconstruction of a human brain, provides a first-ever high resolution view of the inner workings of the human brain that could... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7135928/the-brain-in-3d-new-model-details-the-human-brain-down-to-its-cells/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0c1a2be840360d40/698a92a647ca381a113c38f5/amunts4hr.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2240 og:image:height: 1260 og:image:alt: amunts4HR og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Brain in 3D: New Model Details the Human Brain Down to its Cells twitter:description: BigBrain, a 3D digital reconstruction of a human brain, provides a first-ever high resolution view of the inner workings of the human brain that could... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0c1a2be840360d40/698a92a647ca381a113c38f5/amunts4hr.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Health](/section/health/) # The Brain in 3D: New Model Details the Human Brain Down to its Cells > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. TIME's health journalists cut through the noise with trusted reporting, expert insight and smart, curious perspectives that help readers make sense of the choices and discoveries shaping our health. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jun 20, 2013 6:01 PM UTC  Researchers use a special tool called a microtome to cut sections from a brain preserved in paraffin wax into tiny slivers 20-micromters thick. Researchers use a special tool called a microtome to cut sections from a brain preserved in paraffin wax into tiny slivers 20-micromters thick. Image courtesy of Amunts, Ziles, Evans, et. al by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jun 20, 2013 6:01 PM UTC BigBrain, a 3D digital reconstruction of a human [brain](http://topics.time.com/brain/), provides a first-ever high resolution view of the inner workings of the human brain that could lead to better understanding of how we think, talk, and feel. more The new tool, which is available for free to researchers in the scientific and medical community, is the first to map the anatomy of the brain to a resolution of 20 microns, which is smaller than a strand of human hair. That level of microscopic detail has scientists excited about what they might find as they start to delve deeper into how the brain works to better understand language, memories, sensory experiences and even why things go awry in conditions such as Alzheimer’s and [dementia](http://topics.time.com/dementia/). “Research has begun to realize that without really deep knowledge of the structures involved, we will never have an understanding of the data being produced by many of these other techniques and methods,” says Dr. Peter Stern, senior editor of the journal _Science,_ which published details of the effort, during a teleconference about the project. The virtual brain map was created by German and Canadian researchers, who assembled more than 7,400 painstakingly produced slices of brain, each 20 micrometers thick, from a deceased 65-year old female. They say it will serve as an atlas and ultimate reference for the various layers and cellular circuits that contribute to everything from movement to language, planning and memories. (**MORE:** [The Brain: What The Mouse Brain Tells Us](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580427,00.html)) The reference brains that have existed before have generally not been able to provide microscopic level detail, and have stopped at about 1 mm resolution, the limit of MRI images. BigBrain, however, has the potential of providing a better understanding how the brain’s cells are assembled and interact with each other. “This, if you’d like, is big science comes to the brain,” said the study’s senior author Dr. Alan Evans, a professor of neurology at the [Montreal](http://topics.time.com/montreal/) Neurological Institute at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in the teleconference. According to Evans the new brain allows a completely new level of insight into the organization of the brain and how interactions between its various regions explain behavior and function. “We’ve raised the level of insight orders of magnitude beyond what was possible at the turn of the 20th century. This data set will revolutionize our ability to understand internal brain organization,” he says. (**MORE:** [Allen Institute: Microsoft Cofounder’s Organization Holds Brain Hackathon](http://techland.time.com/2012/07/03/allen-institute-microsoft-cofounders-organization-holds-brain-hackathon/)) The brain is part of the European Human Brain Project, which hopes to promote more collaboration among neuroscience researchers around the world. “When you are interested in a common neurodegenerative disorder like Alzheimer’s disease, you have the first-ever human brain model where you can look into details of the human hippocampus, which is the brain region extremely important for memory. You can look into brain regions which are connected with the hippocampus and play a major role in this disease, but you can also study how many cells you need to build up a cortical unit,” said senior author Dr. Karl Zilles, a senior professor at the Julich Research Alliance and the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine at the Research Center Julich in Germany in the teleconference. Having the virtual brain available without cost should also encourage more researchers to access and discuss what they find — to to mention provide them with common ground on which to base their investigations. “This is the basis for scientific discussions because everybody can work with this brain model and speak about the same basic findings and we can develop new methodical aspects based on th\[is\] common model of the human brain,” said Zilles. (**MORE:** [Your Brain on Laughter](http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/09/the-laughing-brain/)) Other groups have produced similar maps of the mouse brain — the Allen Brain Atlas (ABA) is the largest public-access databases of all genes expressed in the [mouse brain](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580427,00.html), and researchers responsible for that effort have begun to model the same information from human brains, using imaging techniques to identify and measure the activity of genes in about 1000 regions of the human brain. “It is very important to have these tools and unifying coordinated frameworks for the study of the human brain as they have historically only been available for model organisms such as rodents and non-human primates,” says Ed Lein, an associate investigator at the Allen Institute of Brain Science, which launched the ABS. “As the \[BigBrain\] model is adopted by researchers and annotated for the underlying functional anatomy its value will increase as a framework for integrating data from different fields.” The BigBrain dataset will be provided through the [CBRAIN Portal](https://bigbrain.cbrain.mcgill.ca/) with free registration. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7135928/the-brain-in-3d-new-model-details-the-human-brain-down-to-its-cells/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7135928/the-brain-in-3d-new-model-details-the-human-brain-down-to-its-cells/"},"headline":"The Brain in 3D: New Model Details the Human Brain Down to its Cells","datePublished":"2013-06-20T18:01:30.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T09:58:07.298Z","description":"BigBrain, a 3D digital reconstruction of a human brain, provides a first-ever high resolution view of the inner workings of the human brain that could...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7135928/the-brain-in-3d-new-model-details-the-human-brain-down-to-its-cells/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0c1a2be840360d40/698a92a647ca381a113c38f5/amunts4hr.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0c1a2be840360d40/698a92a647ca381a113c38f5/amunts4hr.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"amunts4HR","caption":"Researchers use a special tool called a microtome to cut sections from a brain preserved in paraffin wax into tiny slivers 20-micromters thick.","creditText":"Image courtesy of Amunts, Ziles, Evans, et. al","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7135928/the-brain-in-3d-new-model-details-the-human-brain-down-to-its-cells/","name":"The Brain in 3D: New Model Details the Human Brain Down to its Cells"}}]}] ```