A Trip Through A 3D-Modeled Brain

Megan Garber | The Atlantic | August 7, 2013

See how a mouse's mind sees something.

Brains are, by design, incredibly dense. Whether a particular brain belongs to a human or a mouse, it features layer upon layer of matter that twists and turns and is almost incomprehensible in its complexity. 

Our minds are a little bit mind-boggling.

Which is what makes the video above, produced by Nature, so remarkable. It depicts a 3D model of a little piece of a mouse's brain -- specifically, its retina. And the model is, save for its rainbow-bright colors, a faithful one: It shows the precise shape and location of 950 different cells, including both cell bodies and cell branches (dendrites). Each color represents the branches of a different nerve cell.