deangeckt/connectivity_explorer

Connectivity Explorer is a free, browser-based 3D tool for exploring how neurons in the brain's cortex connect to each other. It requires no installation or account. You open the live demo in a browser, pick a neuron, and see its connections and the physical paths of connected neurons rendered in 3D space. The data comes from the MICrONS project, a large research effort that used electron microscopy (a very high-resolution imaging technique) to map a tiny cubic millimeter of mouse visual cortex in detail. That dataset contains about 1,300 neurons and 146,000 connections between them recorded within that volume. The tool visualizes this specific dataset. In the viewer, you pick a source neuron, sample its synaptic targets (the neurons it sends signals to), and explore both the skeleton shapes of those neurons and the physical locations of the connection points called synapses in 3D. A faint gray layer in the background shows additional neurons from outside the main column for spatial context. From the viewer, you can also jump directly to the same data in Neuroglancer, a more advanced neuroscience visualization tool used widely in the field. The project is built with TypeScript and React and can be run locally with a few standard commands. The author adapted it from a previous open-source tool called SWC Editor. This tool is aimed at neuroscience researchers and students who want to visually explore the MICrONS cortical connectivity dataset without installing specialized software. A citation snippet is provided for academic use.