Over the coming years, neuroscientists could tell us more about how the brain works than we’ve learned in the last 10,000 years. Advanced scanning techniques have the ability to directly monitor a brain at work and precisely describe how the brain reacts to stimuli. Now, a new tool that allows scientists to crunch large data sets, by distributing the work across multiple computers, has the potential to dramatically accelerate their work.

Using sheet microscopes, laser light is utilized to scan a sample of the brain of an immature zebra fish. The microscopes record exactly when and how specific cells respond to stimuli. These scans, however, can rapidly produce gigabytes or even terabytes of data.

Using a single workstation, researchers have to begin processing and then return the next day to get the results. Then adjustments are made and the data is run again. This means it can take days or even weeks to produce worthwhile results.

Thunder, a set of tools developed by Jeremy Freeman, Misha Ahrens, and other colleagues at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus, uses distributed computing to process the data and can shorten days worth of data processing time into hours or even minutes.

The improvements made to data processing using the new tools are available in the July 27 issue of the journal Nature Methods. A companion article in that issue describes the use of Thunder and a new microscope which mapped nearly every individual cell in the brain of a zebrafish as it responded to stimuli.

The researchers claim that Thunder and distributed computing are just steps on the road to a full set of tools to analyze large data sets.

“The analyses we developed are building blocks. The development of new analyses for interpreting large-scale recording is an active field and goes hand-in-hand with the development of resources for large-scale computing and imaging. The algorithms in our paper are a starting point,” said Ahrens in a statement.

Understanding exactly how the brain functions and responds to stimuli could eventually lead to advancements in human intelligence, improved treatment for mental illness, learning disabilities and brain injuries.