Opening up the brain: making neuroscience research accessible to the next generation
What if we could map the brain in the same way that Google Maps charts a city…not just identifying individual landmarks, but tracing the routes and connections between them?
That is the idea behind “connectomics”, a rapidly developing field that seeks to understand how neurons and regions of the brain connect and communicate. We spoke to Queen’s DPhil student Sapolnach about the questions driving his research, from how brain networks shape our thoughts and behaviour to what happens when those networks are disrupted. He also told us about his work to open up neuroscience to young people around the world, giving students the opportunity to work with real brain data and discover that cutting-edge research is something in which they can actually participate, not simply read about.
For someone who has never heard the word “connectomics”, can you explain a bit about it?
I like to think of connectomics a little like Google Maps, but for the brain. If you opened Google Maps and saw only the individual buildings, you would be missing another important part of how a city works: the roads connecting them, the routes people take, and the traffic flowing between different places. Connectomics is essentially the study of these connections in the brain: how neurons (i.e. the brain cells that receive and transmit information) and different brain regions are connected to one another. A map of these connections is called a “connectome”—essentially, a wiring map of the brain.
This is important because the brain does not operate as a collection of isolated parts. We can learn a great deal by studying individual neurons and brain regions, but we also want to understand how they communicate and work together as networks. By mapping these connections and looking at the activity or “traffic” flowing through them, we can start asking how the brain’s structure and connectivity give rise to things like perception, memory, decision-making and behaviour, and what happens to these networks in disease.
The brain does not operate as a collection of isolated parts.
What first drew you to neuroscience, and what questions are you exploring through your DPhil at Oxford?
The extraordinary range of things that nervous systems can do. Even a fly, with a brain around the size of a grain of sand, can sense you approaching and execute an incredibly fast escape when you try to swat it. And then there is the human brain, which allows us to learn languages, create art, develop new technologies and even sit around being philosophical about how our own brains work. What fascinates me just as much is how differences and changes in the brain can shape who we are: how we think, what we remember, the emotions we experience, how our brains change as we age, and what happens when these processes are disrupted in neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression or addiction. Despite everything we have learned about the brain, many neuropsychiatric conditions remain very difficult to treat, and that gap between our scientific understanding and our ability to help people is something that really motivates me.
Despite everything we have learned about the brain, many neuropsychiatric conditions remain very difficult to treat, and that gap between our scientific understanding and our ability to help people is something that really motivates me.
My DPhil therefore revolves around a few big questions.
First, what is happening in the brain that allows it to operate so efficiently and produce behaviours that are essential for survival?
Second, what happens when brain mechanisms that normally help us survive, such as learning from rewards and seeking out things we need, are hijacked by addictive drugs such as nicotine or behaviours such as gambling?
And finally, can we make better use of the enormous amount of brain data we can now collect to understand why the same treatment may work for one person but not another, to predict who might benefit from a particular treatment, and ultimately to help identify better ways of treating neuropsychiatric disorders?
You’ve said that you’re passionate about making neuroscience research accessible to everyone. Can you explain what can be done to break down the barriers?
The brain makes us who we are, and I think that is one reason why so many people around the world are excited about neuroscience. We saw this excitement recently when researchers produced the largest brain map by number of neurons to date, of the fruit fly brain, and made the data publicly available. People began experimenting with it in all sorts of creative ways, including using the fly brain to play Doom, Mario 64, and Beat Saber!
More broadly, neuroscience is becoming increasingly data-driven, with large-scale brain datasets and powerful research tools being made openly available, creating an unprecedented opportunity to bring cutting-edge research to a much broader community who can contribute new questions and ideas that move the field forward. A big part of what I’m passionate about is working with researchers, educators, and student communities from around the world to build the resources and support that help young students leverage these wonderful tools and datasets.
A neuroimaging dataset, for example, might contain enormous amounts of brain data that may be difficult for a high school student to navigate even when tutorials or detailed instructions for neuroscientists exist, while downloading terabytes of brain data or accessing sufficient computing power creates another practical challenge for neuroscience research. So, for me, making neuroscience accessible means finding ways for people to experience hands-on research regardless of their existing knowledge or technical resources, while giving them the scaffolding, support, and community they need to explore their own scientific questions.
You’re leading the 2026-2027 Connectomics Research Competition. Where did the idea for the Connectomics Research Competition come from, and what will your role involve?
The idea grew out of my work with Clematis Research Empowerment Hub, an initiative I founded to make research more accessible to the next generation of scientists and changemakers by giving young people opportunities to experience authentic research, develop practical skills, and turn their own ideas into meaningful work.
In 2025, I worked with Aarushi Vardhan, a graduate student studying the fruit fly brain, to launch the first international connectomics research competition of its kind for young people. One of the things I loved most was seeing that experience spread internationally beyond the competition itself: students began running neuroscience and research workshops for their own communities, including in languages such as Arabic and Russian, reaching young people across countries including Libya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Egypt and Kazakhstan. For 2026–2027, we wanted to build on that experience and help students appreciate the many different scales at which we can study the brain. Participants can explore connectivity from individual neurons and synapses in the fruit fly nervous system all the way to large-scale networks spanning the human brain, and see how researchers can ask very different questions about the brain depending on the scale at which they look.
A large part of my role is therefore designing the scientific and educational programme: working with researchers and students from around the world, developing tutorials that reduce technical barriers, scaffolding the research process while giving students the independence to explore, and thinking about how we can make neuroscience genuinely exciting to someone encountering it for the first time. Just as importantly, we have spent a lot of time building a supportive research community around the programme — including our Discord community of more than 1,000 members — where students can ask questions, learn from researchers and one another, and hopefully feel that they are part of the scientific community themselves.
Participants will be working with real brain data and tools used by neuroscientists. Why is it important to give students an authentic research experience rather than a simplified version of it?
For me, research is exciting because you are exploring a question without knowing what you are going to find, and I want students to experience that for themselves. When participants work with real brain data and the cutting-edge neuroscience tools, they are not simply following a set of instructions towards a predetermined answer: they can notice something unexpected, ask their own questions, try an analysis that does not work, change direction, and potentially discover something that nobody has looked at in quite the same way before. Of course, authentic research can be challenging, which is why we put so much effort into building tutorials, mentorship, and a supportive community around it, but I think there is enormous value in giving students the tools and support to rise to that challenge rather than simplifying the science itself. Ultimately, I hope they come away not only knowing more about neuroscience, but also seeing themselves as people who can ask meaningful scientific questions and contribute their own ideas to research.
Research is exciting because you are exploring a question without knowing what you are going to find, and I want students to experience that for themselves.
What advice would you give to a young person who is fascinated by the brain and considering further study?
My advice would be to explore your curiosity and not worry about knowing exactly where it will take you. Neuroscience is incredibly broad, so start with whatever genuinely fascinates you about the brain and follow that interest: read about it, find scientific papers and look at the questions researchers are asking, and gradually start thinking about questions of your own.
My advice would be to explore your curiosity and not worry about knowing exactly where it will take you.
What is particularly exciting today is how much of science is becoming open. Researchers are sharing enormous datasets, open-source software, and other resources that anyone can begin exploring, often from their own computer. So I would encourage young people not only to learn about neuroscience, but to experiment with these resources themselves: learn some code, visualise a brain, explore a dataset, or try answering a small question that interests you. Alongside that, seek out opportunities to learn from researchers, mentors, and scientific communities, because seeing how other scientists approach problems and receiving feedback are incredibly valuable parts of learning to do research. I think combining those experiences, learning from others while also exploring independently, is a wonderful way to discover what excites you, build confidence and skills, and gradually find your own path into neuroscience.
If you could shrink us down and take us on a tour through the network of the human brain, what would you want to show us first?
I would take you right down to the level of a single neuron and watch as it receives signals, fires, and passes information on to thousands of other cells around it. Then we could gradually zoom out and see those individual interactions become networks spanning different regions of the brain. It is unlikely that there is a single place where everything we think, feel, and do simply “happens”; instead, even something that seems quite simple can emerge from activity distributed across many interacting systems. I would love to follow a signal as it travels through those networks and watch how the brain continually integrates information about the world, our memories, our internal state, and what we value to produce a decision or behaviour.
Of course, we cannot yet take this kind of tour through an entire human brain at the level of individual neurons and synapses, but the progress has been remarkable: in 1986, scientists mapped the connections among the 302 neurons of a tiny worm; almost four decades later, we had a complete wiring diagram of an adult fruit fly brain containing around 160,000 neurons. The human brain, by comparison, contains around 86 billion neurons, so there is still an extraordinary distance to go. But perhaps, one day, we will be able to take that same journey through the human brain. Seeing this would bring to life what first fascinated me about neuroscience: billions of tiny brain cells working together to produce our thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and ultimately something as complex as the human mind.
Can you recommend a book?
I would recommend Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, who, fittingly, is also an alumnus of Queen’s! I love playing the piano, and I have always been curious about how something as complex as music can emerge from patterns of sound, and how our brains can turn those patterns into vivid memories of people and places, make us want to move or dance, and evoke incredibly powerful emotions. Musicophilia explores this through fascinating stories of people whose experiences of music have been transformed by changes in the brain, and I love the way Sacks uses those stories to explore much bigger questions about the relationship between the brain, music, and who we are. It brings together two things I really enjoy, music and neuroscience, while showing just how strange and remarkable the human brain can be.
What do you enjoy about being a member of Queen’s?
A lot of my daily life at Oxford revolves around Queen’s, and I still love walking through the doors and being greeted by the College’s grand architecture. It is one of those things that reminds me how special it is to study here. Queen’s has also given me a place to continue something I have loved since I was young: playing the piano. I’m certainly not a professional, but I frequently use the College’s piano practice rooms, which have a Kawai grand and an upright piano, and Queen’s was also where I had my first opportunity to play a Steinway & Sons grand piano in the Shulman Auditorium. Steinway is one of the world’s most renowned piano manufacturers, and having seen their grand pianos in so many world-class concert venues, I had always dreamt of playing one myself.
Playing these instruments has given me an even deeper appreciation for music and has genuinely made my time at Oxford a very happy one. I also love the choir and Chapel evensongs, and our library gives us both the beautiful Upper Library and the incredibly pragmatic Lower and New Libraries, which are open 24/7. Having affordable and healthy food in Hall makes everyday College life even better! I’ve also made wonderful friends at Queen’s, both undergraduate and graduate, many of whom study subjects completely different from mine, and I’ve really enjoyed being part of such a diverse community.
