On May 10, 2024, we were delighted to host Professor Peng Hanchuan, Director of the Joint Research Center between Southeast University and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the USA. Professor Peng Hanchuan gave the 108th talk of the Shenzhen Medical Forum held at the Shaheyuan Lihu Campus. His talk was titled "Full-Spectrum Neuronal Diversity and Stereotypy through Whole Brain Morphometry". This forum was hosted by Professor Yang Peng (School of Biomedical Engineering, Medical Department) and attracted many teachers and students from Shenzhen University.

Prof. Baiying Lei presented Prof. Hanchuan Peng with the "Shenzhen University Medicine Forum" Honorary Medal

Prof. Hanchuan Peng's lecture delved into the relationship between neuronal diversity and whole-brain morphometry, providing valuable insights into the complexity of neurons in the mammalian brain. He first introduced a groundbreaking study of whole-brain morphometry, in which Prof. Peng’s team conducted an exhaustive analysis of mouse brain images at a single-cell resolution, covering 3.7 trillion voxels. As a result of this work, one of the largest databases of mammalian brain morphometry to date has been constructed, which provides a solid foundation for a deeper understanding of the diversity and function of neurons. The research not only annotated the 3D locations of more than 180,000 neuronal cell bodies and simulated more than 15,000 dendritic microenvironments, but also characterized the complete morphology of thousands of neurons and their axonal structures. The researchers additionally discovered numerous axonal varicosities that might represent potential synaptic sites. These data offer new clues for understanding the connections between neurons.

Finally, Professor Peng discussed his team’s in-depth analysis of neuronal populations, dendritic microenvironments, and single-cell complete morphologies at multiple levels of information. They revealed the full spectrum and typical features of neuronal diversity, thus providing crucial data to improve our understanding of neuronal diversity and complexity in the mammalian brain.

In summary, Professor Hanchuan Peng's research activities provide a detailed description of key anatomical features and neurons across a wide range of scales and structures. As such, we have gained a deeper understanding of the brain's complexity and diversity, and insights and directions for future research.

Prof. Hanchuan Peng's Biography:

Professor Hanchuan Peng (Fellow of the AIMBE and IEEE), is the Director of the Joint Research Center between Southeast University and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the USA. His research primarily focuses on brain science and medical applications including big data acquisition, management, visualization, analysis, knowledge mining in the brain, brain map structural-functional models, and applications of artificial intelligence. He is the inventor of the widely used Vaa3D system that is used in the imaging big data field, and the minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance (mRMR) feature selection algorithm that is used in the fields of machine learning and data mining. He has focused his research efforts on the construction of digital brain maps and connectivity graphs with single-cell accuracy, and the development and application of related technologies. His international leading work spans neuronal morphology analysis, big data processing, high-performance computing systems, and artificial intelligence algorithms applied to human, mouse, fruit fly, and nematode. His achievements have been published in prestigious journals (such as Nature, Nature Methods, Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Neuron, Science Advances, and TPAMI). His research has also been widely reported in the media including in Nature News, Science News, Science magazine, and on national public radio. His main scientific achievements have been recognized with awards such as the Top Ten Advances in Chinese Life Sciences of 2021 selected by the China Association for Science and Technology, and the Best Paper of the Year by the National Academy of Sciences USA.