Scientists have a new brain atlas to
help them study their favorite organ.
It's a digital, three-dimensional model
called "BigBrain."
Its resolution is finer than a human
hair, so it can reveal clusters of brain
cells and even some large individual
cells. It is being made available to
scientists around the world.
To make the atlas, researchers sliced a
cadaver brain from a 65-year-old
woman into 7,400 thin sections, stained
them to reveal tiny features, and
photographed each one. Then they used
computers to combine the data into a
3-D digital model.
The idea of thin-slicing a brain to
study its anatomy is not new. In fact,
complete bodies of a man and a woman
were sliced and photographed about 20
years ago to create an anatomy
reference called the Visible Human
Project.
For the new brain-mapping project,
the researchers chose the woman's
brain for no special reason other than
it was basically healthy, said Katrin
Amunts of Heinrich Heine University
Duesseldorf in Germany.
She is lead author of a report on the
atlas published Thursday in the journal
Science. Scientists have begun mapping
data from other brain studies onto the
new model to gain new insights, said
senior author Karl Zilles of the Juelich
Aachen Research Alliance in Juelich,
Germany.
