Researchers Create Complete Map Of The Human Brain
The brain model "redefines traditional maps from the beginning of the 20th century,"says Katrin.
Senior editor of the journal Science, Peter Stern, said that the scientists have pushed the limits of current technology.
With a microtome, scientists cut the woman's brain into tiny 20 micrometer-thick sections.
Courtesy: AMUNTS, ZILLES, EVANS ET AL.
In order to create the brain map, the scientists used 7,400 of the brain slices and assembled images of all of them to create a coherent three-dimensional volume of the brain. They used a high-resolution flatbed scanner to digitize the sections into a fully reconstructed high-resolution 3-D brain model.
According to Alan Evans, a professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, the project was "a tour-de-force to assemble images of over 7400 individual histological sections, each with its own distortions, rips and tears, into a coherent 3-D volume."
The BigBrain provides an unparalleled resolution of brain components. Stern said that the "the spatial resolution the researchers achieved exceeds that of presently available reference brains by a factor of 50."
Amunts added that of course the team "would love to have spatial resolution going down to 1 micrometer," but currently "there are simply no computers at this moment which would be capable to process such data, to visualize this or to analyze it."
The team said that it has been "a dream for almost 20 years. The dream came true because of an interdisciplinary and intercontinental collaboration spanning from Europe to Canada and from neuroanatomy to supercomputing."
Even though the atlas map was created using only one person's brain it still provides important information to help interpret other brains, said David Van Essen, a neurobiologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. "Getting a really accurate map in one individual is, I think, very valuable," he added.
The researchers hope to use this map to extract measurements of cortical thickness and further understand how neurodegenerative disorders develop.
One day Amunts and her team hope to develop a brain model at a resolution capable of capturing every single detail of cell morphology - which would require a resolution of 1 micron.
The brain model "redefines traditional maps from the beginning of the 20th century,"says Katrin.
Senior editor of the journal Science, Peter Stern, said that the scientists have pushed the limits of current technology.
With a microtome, scientists cut the woman's brain into tiny 20 micrometer-thick sections.
Courtesy: AMUNTS, ZILLES, EVANS ET AL.
In order to create the brain map, the scientists used 7,400 of the brain slices and assembled images of all of them to create a coherent three-dimensional volume of the brain. They used a high-resolution flatbed scanner to digitize the sections into a fully reconstructed high-resolution 3-D brain model.
According to Alan Evans, a professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, the project was "a tour-de-force to assemble images of over 7400 individual histological sections, each with its own distortions, rips and tears, into a coherent 3-D volume."
The BigBrain provides an unparalleled resolution of brain components. Stern said that the "the spatial resolution the researchers achieved exceeds that of presently available reference brains by a factor of 50."
Amunts added that of course the team "would love to have spatial resolution going down to 1 micrometer," but currently "there are simply no computers at this moment which would be capable to process such data, to visualize this or to analyze it."
The team said that it has been "a dream for almost 20 years. The dream came true because of an interdisciplinary and intercontinental collaboration spanning from Europe to Canada and from neuroanatomy to supercomputing."
Even though the atlas map was created using only one person's brain it still provides important information to help interpret other brains, said David Van Essen, a neurobiologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. "Getting a really accurate map in one individual is, I think, very valuable," he added.
The researchers hope to use this map to extract measurements of cortical thickness and further understand how neurodegenerative disorders develop.
One day Amunts and her team hope to develop a brain model at a resolution capable of capturing every single detail of cell morphology - which would require a resolution of 1 micron.
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