Researchers culled from institutions around the world have succeeded in digitally reconstructing a section of a rat’s brain.

The New York Times reports that information regarding the reconstruction of the rodent brain comes directly from the Blue Brain Project, which is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering mammalian brain circuitry. The amibitious A.I. project has received support from the Human Brain Project, a European research program.

The recent attempts to digitally recreate a mammalian brain have been met with controversy. In 2014 hundreds of neuroscientists signed an open letter chiding the European neuroscience community for its narrow focus and lack of transparency.

Likewise, advances in A.I. technology have come under scrutiny by concerned experts. In January the MIT-affiliated Future of Life Institute published an open letter, signed by scientific and technological luminaries such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, that called for “important and timely research on how to make AI systems robust and beneficial.”

According to Henry Markram, a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the first draft of a functioning map of 30,000 brain cells has been completed. Published in Cell, the report presents a “digital reconstruction of the microcircuitry of somatosensory cortex of juvenile rat.”

Although this mapping of a section of a rodent’s brain is, in itself, no proof that scientists could reconstruct a human brain, it is seen as an important first step towards eventually accomplishing this goal.

Cori Bargmann, the co-director of the new Kavli Neural Systems Institute at Rockefeller University, expressed her enthusiasm over the new report but cautioned that the “simulations are in their infancy.” Using an aircraft metaphor to elucidate the reality of the recent advances made in in A.I.-related technology, Bargmann said, “They built a 747, and it’s taxiing around the runway.”