The BICCN aims to provide researchers and the public with a comprehensive reference of the diverse cell types in human, mouse, and non-human primate brain. A network of integrated centers and laboratories including U01, RF1, and U19 data generating centers, R24 data archives, and a U24 Brain Cell Data Center (BCDC) are working collaboratively to generate, map, and share these data with the community.

A comprehensive understanding of brain cell types is essential to understand how neural circuits generate perception and complex behaviors. Identifying and characterizing brain cell types, with the means to target each cell type, will elucidate the functional interactions that give rise to the emergent properties of the central nervous system.

Each BICCN project contributes publicly accessible data to a multimodal classification of cell types based on transcriptomic and epigenetic, morphology and connectivity, and physiological signatures of cells.