On Apr. 2, 2014, the Allen Institute for Brain Science published two landmark papers in the journal Nature, highlighting their groundbreaking work to produce and share the BrainSpan Atlas of the Developing Human Brain prenatal data, and the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas.

Using the data, Allen Institute scientists were able to demonstrate that there are highly specific patterns in the connections among different brain regions, and that the strengths of these connections vary with greater than five orders of magnitudes, balancing a small number of strong connections with a large number of weak connections.

This publication came just as the research team wrapped up more than four years of work to collect and make publicly available the data behind the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas project, with the completion of the Atlas announced in March 2014.