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Researchers have created the largest and most detailed wiring diagram of a mammalian brain to date, by mapping cells in a cubic millimetre of a mouse’s brain tissue. In a landmark achievement, the diagram also details the activity of individual neurons on a large scale―a neuroscience first.

The high-resolution 3D map contains more than 200,000 brain cells, around 82,000 of which are neurons. It also includes more than 500 million of the neuronal connection points called synapses and more than 4 kilometres of neuronal wiring, all found in a tiny block of tissue in a brain region involved in vision. The only brain map of comparable scale is that of a cubic millimetre of human brain, which included 16,000 neurons and 150 million synapses. The new map also captured the activity of tens of thousands of neurons firing signals and interacting with each other to process visual information.

This brain-activity map, combined with the wiring diagram, marks a milestone in connectomics, a field that aims to show how brains process and organize information. Behind the massive efforts are more than 150 researchers in the Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks (MICrONS) project, who described their work in a package of eight papers published today in Nature and Nature Methods. The MICrONS project has made its resources available for the neuroscience community online, and other teams are already exploring them in different studies.

“They managed to do something that we haven’t done as a neuroscience community in basically all of our history, which is to be able to map the activity of neurons onto the wiring on a very large population of neurons,” says Mariela Petkova, a neuroscientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is not involved with the project. “We have never seen it at this scale.”

The data “are really stunningly beautiful,” says Forrest Collman, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, who co-authored the studies. “Looking at it really gives you an awe about the sense of complexity in the brain that is very much akin to looking up at the stars of night.”

Mouse in a matrix

To create the breakthrough map, researchers first recorded the firing of almost 76,000 neurons in the visual cortex of a mouse as the animal watched various videos, including clips from The Matrix, for two hours. Then they sliced up a cubic millimetre of the mouse’s brain into thousands of tissue slices, each about one four-hundredth the width of a human hair.

The scientists imaged each slice and assembled the images into a 3D map. Finally, they used artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms to annotate the neurons, their branching projections, and their synapses. The team also matched the neurons in the map with their recordings of brain cells in action.

Moritz Helmstaedter, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, says “the combination of function and structure at that scale” is unprecedented. It’s “a very impressive endeavour and success”.

Fire together, wire together

The work yielded insights into the basic rules that shape neural circuits in the mouse brain. For example, the authors found that neurons in the cortex that respond to similar types of visual feature—such as certain shapes or directions of movement—often form more connections with one another, no matter how far apart they are, than they do with neurons that specialize in a different type of feature.

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There was a time when entering couples therapy was seen as the death knell of a relationship – a last-ditch attempt to save a partnership beyond salvation.

“People are afraid that once you’ve gone to couples therapy, you’re on a negative track,” says Dr Matthew Siblo, a licensed professional counselor in Washington, DC.

Now, couples therapy is more commonplace. One 2023 survey found that 37% of US couples who live together have been to couples therapy. In 2022, nearly 30% of UK therapists reported a rise in the number of inquiries for couples counseling.

It’s also more successful. “Success, how we define it, is the couple establishing a closer friendship, a closer sense of connection … and better conflict management,” says Dr Julie Gottman, a clinical psychologist and co-founder of the Gottman Institute. According to Gottman, the success rate of couples therapy used to be about 17%. Now, the Gottman Institute’s methods have about a 75% success rate.

But what about when a relationship truly seems to be on its last legs? Will a couples therapist ever tell a pair to break up?

“I would not, personally,” says Siblo.

Siblo says he has never directly told a couple that he thinks they should break up, because he doesn’t think it would be appropriate or productive.

“I’m there to create a space of greater understanding,” he says. If that leads to people deciding to separate, Siblo can help them navigate that process. But telling a couple their relationship is not viable risks distracting them from the issues at hand; the focus becomes the therapist’s opinion rather than the pair’s relationship. Not only that, it could end up pushing the couple closer together by uniting them against a common enemy: the therapist.

“It would backfire,” Siblo says.

Telling clients what to do puts them in an “infantilized position”, says Gottman. If a couple is at a complete loss on how to move forward, Gottman might present them with several different options – including separation, in some cases – and talk them through each.

The goal is to empathize and disarm some of the defensiveness or critical ways of communicating

Gottman has intervened more directly in certain situations, she says, including cases involving domestic violence. There are two types of domestic violence, Gottman explains.

Roughly 80% is “situational”, meaning both people are involved and the violence is mild to moderate – for example, pushing, shoving or slapping. In these cases, Gottman says, “both people really want to change” and “they both might feel deeply ashamed and guilty”. Situational domestic violence is often the result of both partners getting emotionally “flooded” – going into fight-or-flight mode – during conflict. This dynamic can be successfully resolved with proper couples therapy, Gottman says.

But in the 20% of cases that are “characterological” – meaning there’s a clear victim and a perpetrator who takes no responsibility for the violence and inflicts major injuries – Gottman says intervention is appropriate.

“It’s crucial that the couple break up and the [victim], typically the wife, get somewhere safe,” she says.

In these instances, Gottman says she talks to the couple separately, and works with the victims on a safety plan to extricate themselves and any children from the relationships.

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Couples therapy has become more commonplace; a 2023 survey found that 37% of US couples who live together had tried it. Illustration: Angelica Alzona/Guardian Design

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CLIMATEWIRE | The Trump administration is canceling a popular grant program that has given states and communities billions of dollars to protect against natural disasters, according to an internal document obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.

Federal Emergency Management Agency acting Administrator Cameron Hamilton wrote in a memo Thursday that the agency will not allocate the $750 million that was planned this year for Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants. The BRIC program funds local projects that reduce damage from flooding, tornadoes, and other weather-related events.

FEMA also will stop funding projects that were previously approved for BRIC grants and are still underway, Hamilton wrote.

The cancellation is the Trump administration’s latest blow to FEMA, which provides tens of billions of dollars a year in disaster aid and grants. The administration has also frozen $10 billion in disaster aid for nonprofits, including hospitals, as it scrutinizes FEMA programs for potentially helping undocumented migrants.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has floated shrinking or dissolving the agency, saying in March, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.”

Although the agency has faced criticism — notably from President Donald Trump — for its response to major disasters, BRIC drew wide praise as an effort to make communities better able to withstand natural disasters and climate impacts.

BRIC has distributed $5 billion in grants since it began in 2020 during the first Trump administration, FEMA records show. The grants typically pay 75 percent of a project’s cost and have given some projects as much as $50 million.

The program was so popular that FEMA had to reject nearly 2,000 applicants seeking $13 billion in BRIC grants. The agency itself touts BRIC for helping states, localities, and native tribes “reduce their hazard risk” and “build capacity and capability.”

But Hamilton wrote Thursday that “BRIC grants have not increased the level of hazard mitigation as much as desired, and may supplant state, local, tribal and territorial capital investment planning.”

“With that in mind, I am providing new direction for the BRIC Program,” Hamilton added in his two-page memo.

Former senior FEMA officials expressed concern over the decision to stop releasing previously approved BRIC grant money.

“All of those things that were selected but had not begun will get canceled,” said one former senior official who asked not to be named to avoid alienating FEMA. The cancellation could apply to entire projects or to the second half of a project that is halfway completed.

“That will crush projects that are underway,” a second former senior FEMA official said.

Although BRIC is supported by Congress and coveted by states, the program has become a target of the Trump administration because of its focus during the Biden administration on addressing climate change and promoting equity.

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When I was pregnant with my daughter, my husband and I were already discussing being “one and done.” We’re both the oldest of three siblings in our respective families and knew the stressors that multiple kids placed on our parents. Yet, the door wasn’t totally shut on having more than one child. 

Until I lost my job when I was six months pregnant. 

The unexpected financial hardship was overwhelming. We were preparing to move into a larger apartment and were shocked by the high prices of baby essentials. We were already concerned about affording a baby with two incomes, so losing one without warning was our worst nightmare. Although my career and our finances eventually recovered, it became clear that we could comfortably only afford one child, especially given the uncertain job market and economy.

In the 10 years since I’ve had my daughter, I’ve encountered more and more parents, particularly millennials, who are choosing to have only one child. This trend may contradict recent research on people’s ideal family structure: a 2023 Gallup poll found that 47% of U.S. adults believe one or two children is the ideal family size, while 45% prefer three or more children. What’s more, the preference for larger families (three or more children) is currently at its highest point since 1971.

But the reality of what it costs to raise a child in the U.S. today makes plans for multiple children unattainable for many parents. On a positive note, there’s a silver lining to having one child, even if you wanted more.

The Rising Cost of Raising Children

The fertility rate in the U.S. has steadily declined since the Great Recession of 2007, according to Kent Bausman, PhD, professor of sociology at Maryville University in St. Louis. This pattern has been consistent for both millennials and Gen Z (who entered prime childbearing age in 2015). 

In the two decades prior to the recession, the fertility rate in the U.S. remained relatively stable at just above replacement levels, fluctuating from 2.08 in 1990 to 2.12 in 2007.2However, the fertility rate has fallen below replacement levels every year since 2010 and has continued a steady decline from 1.9 in 2010 to 1.7 in 2024.

Dr. Bausman believes structural factors, such as skyrocketing housing costs, rising medical expenses, and the high price of child care, are playing a significant role in the decision to have one child.

“Child care was not as substantial a portion of the household budget for baby boomers and early Gen Xers,” Dr. Bausman explains. “For many millennials, having multiple children feels financially impossible.”

Estimates suggest the annual cost of raising a child in 2023 ranged from $15,512.52 to $17,459.43. For families with multiple children, the estimated cost per child ranged from $12,350 to $13,900 per year. Dr. Bausman adds the cumulative financial burden of another child is often comparable to adding an additional mortgage.

Lack of support

The high cost of living and child care is compounded by the lack of paid parental leave in the United States.

“Women are participating in the workforce more than ever before and their participation is needed for our economy to grow at a healthy pace,” says Setu Shah, founder and CEO of Financial Doula. “However, without proper paid leave and affordable child care, many parents are unable to take the financial burden of raising another child due to the sacrifice they would need to make to their careers, income, and/or lifestyle.”

Child care can be more expensive than rent and in-state college tuition in many states.6 Shah says many families are dipping into savings, taking on debt, and cutting out other major expenses just to afford it.

A mental load increase

Then there is the mental load of raising children. The unpaid, and typically invisible, cognitive labor that comes from handling a household has only intensified in recent years. That’s particularly due to increased demands and societal pressures that are greatly fueled by social media.

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Neuroscientists have observed for the first time how structures deep in the brain are activated when the brain becomes aware of its own thoughts, known as conscious perception.

The brain is constantly bombarded with sights, sounds, and other stimuli, but people are only ever aware of a sliver of the world around them—the taste of a piece of chocolate or the sound of someone’s voice, for example. Researchers have long known that the outer layer of the brain, called the cerebral cortex, plays a part in this experience of being aware of specific thoughts.

The involvement of deeper brain structures has been much harder to elucidate, because they can be accessed only with invasive surgery. Designing experiments to test the concept in animals is also tricky. But studying these regions would allow researchers to broaden their theories of consciousness beyond the brain’s outer wrapping, say researchers.

“The field of consciousness studies has evoked a lot of criticism and scepticism because this is a phenomenon that is so hard to study,” says Liad Mudrik, a neuroscientist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. But scientists have increasingly been using systematic and rigorous methods to investigate consciousness, she says.

Aware or not

In a study published in Science today, Mingsha Zhang, a neuroscientist at Beijing Normal University, focused on the thalamus. This region at the centre of the brain is involved in processing sensory information and working memory, and is thought to have a role in conscious perception.

Participants were already undergoing therapy for severe and persistent headaches, for which they had thin electrodes injected deep into their brains. This allowed Zhang and his colleagues to study their brain signals and measure conscious awareness.

The participants were asked to move their eyes in a particular way depending on whether they noticed an icon flash onto a screen in front of them. The icon was designed so that the participants would be aware of its appearance only about half of the time.

During the tasks, the researchers recorded neural activity in multiple regions of the brain, including the thalamus and the cortex. This is the first time that such simultaneous recordings have been made in people doing a task that is relevant to consciousness science, says Christopher Whyte, a systems neuroscientist at the University of Sydney in Australia. The work “is really pretty remarkable,” he says, because it allowed the team to look at how the timing of neural activity in different regions varied.

Gatekeeper

The activity in the participants’ thalamus and prefrontal cortex when they were aware of the icon’s appearance was markedly different from the activity when they were not. The activity when they were aware of the icon appeared earlier and was stronger in sections of the thalamus than in sections of the cortex, and seemed to be coordinated across the two areas. This suggests that the thalamus acts as a filter and controls which thoughts get through to awareness and which don’t, says Mac Shine, a systems neuroscientist at the University of Sydney.

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