CHENNAI: Researchers are increasingly focusing on the human brain as neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and biomedical engineering come together across labs worldwide. At ThinkEdu Conclave 2026, organised by The New Indian Express, a session titled ‘Mapping the Human Brain: Understanding Intelligence’ explored how new tools and datasets are expanding what science can measure and infer about cognition, neural networks, and brain function.
Speaking in the session, Dr Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam, a Professor at IIT Madras and head of the Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre (HTIC), examined the role of brain mapping tools, data and interdisciplinary research in redefining what we is considered ‘intelligence’ — moving away from just thinking of it as a cognitive trait, to seeing it as a living, breathing process that can be measured and understood.
Decoding the brain
Dr Mohanasankar also underlined the scale of the challenge. The human brain, he noted, has about 100 billion neurons and roughly 20 to 40 trillion connections. Mapping it in full remains difficult because existing microscopy methods cannot capture large volumes of tissue in detail, and light penetration under a microscope is limited. He said that new imaging and sectioning methods will have to be built to close these gaps.
Quoting Nobel laureate Francis Crick, he emphasised that detailed neuroanatomy is essential to understand living human brain activity, and that techniques used in animal models are often not directly usable in humans.
Cutting-edge neurotechnology takes shape at IIT Madras
Speaking about IIT Madras’s efforts in this area, he outlined how the institute sourced over 70 post-mortem human brains internationally, then preserved them at minus 80 degrees Celsius. He described the subsequent process as a series of physical and engineering challenges involving sectioning and imaging, and how IIT Madras has built systems and microscopes designed to image large human brain samples.
The output includes DHARANI, which he described as a 3D cell-resolution human brain Atlas. He added that work is ongoing on the next stage of the project.
He recalled that despite early scepticism around the scale of the effort, former Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India Dr Vijay Raghavan supported funding the work precisely because of its ambition.
He stated that the larger aim is to release comprehensive human brain maps that can serve as a global reference, adding that more than 100 human brains are currently being mapped as part of this broader effort.