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Harvard and Google have mapped a 1 cubic millimeter section of the human brain, producing 1.4 petabytes of data from 57,000 cells and 150 million synapses. The mapping involved slicing brain tissue into 5,000 wafers, using a high-cost electron microscope, and employing Google's machine learning for data reconstruction.

A full human brain would generate roughly 1.4 zettabytes of data, necessitating a 140-acre data center costing an estimated $50 billion. The next research phase will focus on mapping a mouse hippocampus over the next five years, which is necessary before attempting to map the entire human brain.