A mouse study reveals new insights into the wiring of a major circuit in the brain that is attacked by Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease. The findings could hone scientists’ understanding of how these disorders arise in the human brain and pinpoint new therapeutic targets.

Published today in Nature, the research is part of a special package of 17 articles written by a consortium of neuroscientists nationwide. The work was conducted under the auspices of the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN) as part of a massive effort to compile a complete atlas of cells in the brain.

The ambitious project aims to unlock the mysteries of the primary motor cortex, a part of the mammalian brain that controls movement.

With funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative, the UCLA team meticulously investigated how the mouse brain is wired. Their research analyzed 600 pathways and catalogued nerve-cell connectivity to create a wiring diagram of critical brain circuits.

«Like any explorer traveling deep into uncharted territory, we make maps to guide future visitors,» said Dr. Hong-Wei Dong, the study’s lead author and a professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. «My lab mapped out the circuitry of the mouse brain to enable other scientists to conduct more accurate experiments in mouse models of diseases like Parkinson’s or Huntington’s disease.»

Dong and his colleagues labeled a small number of individual neurons with a green dye, enabling the team to track their connections with other neurons through arm-like projections called axons and dendrites. These connections, called circuits, process and communicate distinct types of sensory information in the brain.

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Materials provided by University of California — Los Angeles Health Sciences. Original written by Elaine Schmidt. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.