The Human Connectome Project is a US-led effort to map the human brain. The HCP is a five-year project funded by the National Institutes of Health.On September 15, 2010, the NIH announced that it would award two grants: $30 million over five years to a consortium led by Washington University in Saint Louis and the University of Minnesota, and $8.5 million over three years to a consortium led by Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California Los Angeles. The aim of the $40m programme is to map the entire human neural wiring system by scanning the brains of 1,200 Americans. The project uses magnetic resonance imaging.