Though there are still many unknowns about the brain, these new tools and techniques could help bring them to light.A team of neuroscientists created a semantic map of the brain that showed in remarkable detail which areas of the cortex respond to linguistic information about a wide range of concepts, from faces and places to social relationships and weather phenomena. Incredibly rich, high-resolution brain mapping presents a great opportunity for neuroscientists to deeply ponder what this new data says about how the brain works. It is a very exciting time for neuroscience research. For example, how do these incredibly complex networks of brain cell types work together to generate cognition? Is there a basic unit in the brain that directs how it forms and functions? Answering questions like these will help researchers understand how specific brain changes are linked to different brain disorders like dementia and come up with new strategies to treat them. A map of cells does not necessarily tell researchers how the cells function and interact with one another as a whole. While researchers have been busy collecting incredibly detailed information about the brain, using this data to create new theories about how the brain works lags behind. However, it was his ability to come up with a theory to explain his observations that advanced neuroscientists’ understanding of the brain. Technical advances in cell staining and microscopy helped Santiago Ramón y Cajal make his pivotal discovery about neurons. Collaborating research groups in the network recently released the most comprehensive map of cell types in the brain’s motor cortex across humans, monkeys and mice.īut is this enough to understand how the brain works? BRAIN Initiative created the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN) in which my lab participates. There has been considerable effort to coordinate and pool data from brain mapping research labs to create comprehensive brain maps. Scientists now have the tools to examine the entire brain in very fine detail. These steps are repeated for each cell type, creating a richer and more complete map of the brain with each run-through. Scientists can then use this map to compare with individual brains and note their variations. This reference brain serves as a standardized map that shows where each brain region is located. Once scientists are able to detect their target cell type in an image dataset, the final step is to locate specific cell features in a reference brain. Artificial intelligence algorithms in particular have enabled scientists to detect many different cell features in the brain, such as cell shape and size, as well as the processes they undergo.
Human brain mapping software#
Luckily, remarkable advances in computer equipment and software have made large-scale data analysis possible. Even though a mouse brain is smaller than a human fingertip, the size of these datasets can easily reach between a few hundred gigabytes to a terabyte. Unsurprisingly, this type of 3D imaging creates very large datasets. Zooming in on this high-resolution image of a mouse brain reveals rectangular lines where images were stitched together, with each colored dot representing a specific brain cell type. Microscopy tools can stitch together individual image tiles into a photo mosaic of the whole brain. It’s like building a Google map of the brain: By combining millions of individual street photos, you can zoom in to see each street corner and zoom out to see an entire city. Stitching these image tiles together can reconstruct an intact 3D volume like a photo mosaic. Specialized microscopy tools can take snapshots, or tiles, of the entire brain. The next step is to image the whole brain using microscopy techniques that allow scientists to view parts too small for the naked eye to see. Immunostaining methods, on the other hand, render brain samples transparent with a special chemical treatment and use antibodies to label the target cell type with a fluorescent tag. The genetic method takes advantage of animals, like mice, that can be genetically engineered so only the target cell type is visible under specific fluorescent lights. This can be done with either genetic or immunostaining methods. The process is like finding a needle in a haystack – it would be a lot easier to find if the needle, or cell type, glowed. Scientists first need to label, or visualize, a specific cell type. My lab has been utilizing these brain mapping tools to understand what cell types make up the brain and how they contribute to the creation of cognition. Jumping forward 100 years to today, modern tools called neurotechniques, which include brain mapping, have given neuroscientists a way to closely inspect every component of the brain. Neuroscience has since experienced a rapid explosion of new experimental tools. The CLARITY technique renders whole brains transparent so they can be examined at the molecular level.