On Jul. 15, 2009, the National Institutes of Health Blueprint for Neuroscience Research announced it was  launching a $30 million project that used cutting-edge brain imaging technologies to map the circuitry of the healthy adult human brain.

By systematically collecting brain imaging data from hundreds of subjects, the Human Connectome Project (HCP) yielded insight into how brain connections underlie brain function, and opened up new lines of inquiry for human neuroscience.