Everything about Connectome
Comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain
A connectome is a comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain, and may be thought of as its "wiring diagram". These maps are available in varying levels of detail. A functional connectome shows connections between various brain regions, but not individual neurons. These are available for large animals, including mice and humans, are normally obtained by techniques such as MRI, and have a scale of millimeters. At the other extreme are neural connectomes, which show individual neurons and their interconnections. These are usually obtained by electron microscopy (EM) and have a scale of nanometers. They are only available for small creatures such as the worm C. elegans and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and small regions of mammal brains. Finally there are chemical connectomes, showing which neurons emit, and are sensitive to, a wide variety of neuromodulators. As of 2025, only C. elegans has such a connectome. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: ConnectomeA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: The connectome of an insect brainInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: Brain Network AnalysisThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: The WU-Minn Human Connectome Project: An overviewCited 6,154 times
- Go sideways: ConnectomicsA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Neural circuit reconstructionA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun The complete mapping of the structural links in an organism's neural circuitry.
🗂️ The subject at a glance
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
The WU-Minn Human Connectome Project: An overview
The minimal preprocessing pipelines for the Human Connectome Project
The Human Connectome: A Structural Description of the Human Brain
Functional connectome fingerprinting: identifying individuals using patterns of brain connectivity
A mesoscale connectome of the mouse brain
The Human Connectome Project: A data acquisition perspective
Rich-Club Organization of the Human Connectome
Function in the human connectome: Task-fMRI and individual differences in behavior
🆕 Influential since 2022
The connectome of an insect brain
Whole-brain annotation and multi-connectome cell typing of Drosophila
Data leakage inflates prediction performance in connectome-based machine learning models
Connectome gradient dysfunction in major depression and its association with gene expression profiles and treatment outcomes
The Developing Human Connectome Project Neonatal Data Release
📚 Books worth reading
Brain Network AnalysisMoo K. Chung · 2019
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Connectomics Connectomics is the production and study of connectomes, which are comprehensive maps of connections within an organism's nervous system. Study of neuronal…
- Neural circuit reconstruction Neural circuit reconstruction is the reconstruction of the detailed circuitry of the nervous system (or a portion of the nervous system) of an animal.…
- History of microscale connectomics The term connectomics has two meanings. One is the detailed study of individual connections between neurons of the nervous system, or microscale connectomics…
- Drosophila connectome A Drosophila connectome is a list of neurons in the Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) nervous system, and the chemical synapses between them. The fly's…
- Brain mapping Brain mapping is a set of neuroscience techniques predicated on the mapping of (biological) quantities or properties onto spatial representations of the…
- Neuronal tracing In neuroscience, neuronal tracing or neuron reconstruction refers to the determination of the pathway of the neurites or neuronal processes, the axons…
- Jeff W. Lichtman Jeff William Lichtman (born 1951) is an American neuroscientist. He is the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Santiago Ramón…
- Development of the nervous system The construction of the nervous system is one of the most complex processes in embryology. Development of the nervous system, or neural development (neurodevelo…