Micromapping

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of creating (various types of) extremely detailed maps of a small area. countable, uncountable

    "Merzenich was an expert in a technique called "micromapping", a precise but time-consuming way of finding which parts of the brain responded to external stimuli, using extremely small electrodes that measure the electrical activity of a single neuron. Merzenich used macaque monkeys, measuring neuronal activity as he tapped different parts of the monkey's hand, in order to see which areas of it stimulated electrical activity in the monitored part of the brain. Mapping a whole hand using this method could take between 20 and 40 hours."

Example

More examples

"Merzenich was an expert in a technique called "micromapping", a precise but time-consuming way of finding which parts of the brain responded to external stimuli, using extremely small electrodes that measure the electrical activity of a single neuron. Merzenich used macaque monkeys, measuring neuronal activity as he tapped different parts of the monkey's hand, in order to see which areas of it stimulated electrical activity in the monitored part of the brain. Mapping a whole hand using this method could take between 20 and 40 hours."

Etymology

From micro- + mapping.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.