Allen Institute for Brain Science

New Capabilities

Lead research institution

For decades, neuroscientists assumed the brain's 'blue spot', a tiny cluster of cells in the brainstem, worked like a foghorn, blasting the same chemical signal everywhere. A study from the Allen Institute in Nature shows it is closer to a targeted postal network, sending specific messages along specific routes.

Updated 2 days ago

New Capabilities

As of September 2026: Leadership commented on the study's ethical implications

Stanford scientists created mice that grow lab-grown human neurons where their own brain cells were — the deepest integration yet of human tissue into an animal brain. The team depleted roughly 14 million native mouse cortical neurons and gave 4 million human ones room to expand.

Updated Sep 16

New Capabilities

As of May 2026: Pursuing whole-brain modeling using detailed biological data

Scientists at Germany's Jülich Research Centre demonstrated in mid-January 2026 that Europe's most powerful supercomputer can simulate 20 billion spiking neurons—matching the scale of the human cerebral cortex. The team plans to combine this capability with anatomical brain data to run full-cortex simulations, a technical milestone that has eluded researchers since the field's founding in the 1980s.

Updated May 22