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The Allen Institute is fiercely committed to solving some of the biggest mysteries of bioscience, researching the unknown of human biology, in the brain, the human cell, and the immune system. At the same time, we are pushing the frontiers of bioscience to continue to explore the edges of scientific discovery.

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Lab Notes — a podcast from the Allen Institute

 
 

March 15, 2022 — Scientists have known for centuries that the brain is the seat of human thought, but we’re still in the dark about how it works. For Brain Awareness Week 2022, Lab Notes asked four neuroscientists to get into the weeds with us about why the brain is so complicated and hard to understand. Do we have any hope of understanding our own brains?

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News Highlights

Read more about the Allen Institute in the news and stories highlighting accomplishments and partnerships. 

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SciShots: A quartet of brain cells

May 20, 2022

Scientists are sifting through the hundreds of thousands of brain cells present in a cubic millimeter of mouse brain

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New research to understand how the brain handles optical illusions and makes predictions

May 9, 2022

3 new projects launch on OpenScope, a shared neuroscience observatory

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SciShots: The labyrinthian protein factory of the cell

May 6, 2022

Graphics software for microscope imagery lights up the endoplasmic reticulum 

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SciShots: How the brain plugs leaks

April 22, 2022

A delicate molecular dance maintains the blood-brain barrier, protecting the brain while allowing transport of necessary resources

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Why is the human brain so difficult to understand? We asked 4 neuroscientists.

April 21, 2022

Thoughts, memories, sensations — why are we still in the dark about how they work?

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SciShots: Gentle imaging for delicate cells

April 15, 2022

Examining fine details for longer time periods

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Our Impact on Science, and our World

Our knowledge, data and tools have been a catalyst across the world, allowing other scientists to accelerate their research and advance our understanding of human health and disease.

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See how researcher Kathryn McGuckin Wuertz is trying to understand the relationship between infectious diseases and neurological diseases
Researchers have succeeded in growing the most lifelike human skin in the lab to date. Allen Institute for Cell Science cell lines formed the basis for the human skin organoids.


Our Revolutionary Scientific Resources

Atlases that map the brain, a “periodic table” of cell types in the brain, and an observatory allowing for a large-scale approach to understanding the brain and watching neurons fire in real time, are all available on Allen Brain Map.
We created the first predictive and integrated 3D cell explorer and a collection of human stem cells to help improve the collective understanding of human cells in health—and ultimately disease, all available on the Allen Cell Explorer.

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