Stable large-scale network architecture and structured individual variability in the awake mouse brain

A 212-sex-balanced awake mouse connectome atlas reveals a stable large-scale functional network architecture aligned with structural topology and organized, gradient-based inter-individual variability.

• Why it matters: Large-scale network scaffolds are known, but awake mouse population architecture and how individual connectivity variability is structured have been unclear, limiting reproducible connectomics and translational circuit studies.
• What they did: The Awake Mouse Connectome Project (AMCP) used multimodal MRI in 212 awake mice to build high-precision tissue probability maps, a reproducible whole-brain functional network atlas, and quantify structured variability; it also benchmarked clustering-derived scaffolds against group ICA (GICA).
• The result: Functional connectivity variability across animals followed organized connectional gradients rather than random dispersion, and AMCP scaling linked sample size and scan duration to connectome precision; individualized parcellations improved behavioural prediction over group-average features for selected domains.

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