The system, called the Connectome 2.0 human MRI scanner, overcomes a significant hurdle for neuroscientists: being able to bridge different brain regions and probe tiny structures necessary to define the “connectome,” the complex matrix of structural connections between nodes in the nervous system, and to do it noninvasively in living humans. The research is published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“This research is a transformative leap in brain imaging—pushing the boundaries of what we can see and understand about the living human brain at a cellular level,” said John Ngai, Ph.D., Director of NIH’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative, or The BRAIN Initiative.

“The new scanner lays essential groundwork for the BRAIN CONNECTS program’s ultimate goal of developing a wiring diagram for the human brain.”

The scanner is innovative in two major ways: It fits snugly around the heads of living people, and it has many more channels than typical MRI systems. These advances greatly increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the system, providing much sharper images of very small biological brain structures than previously possible.