Neuroscientists analyzed a preserved brain of a human, sliced it into very thin slivers and digitized it to create the "BigBrain," the most detailed atlas of the human brain in ultra-high definition 3D. The newest model provides the closest look of the structures of the human brain that may help experts understand certain behaviors and diseases such as Alzheimer's.
The BigBrain virtual atlas of the human brain is 50 times the resolution of what the best magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can do. The best model of the brain today gets into detail of structures of up to a millimeter big but the newest model go to as small as 20 micrometers.
Katrin Amunts,a neuroanatomist from the Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, and colleagues published their research "BigBrain: An Ultrahigh-resolution 3D Human Brain Model" on the journal Science on Thursday June 18.
A report published on the Los Angeles Times detailed how BigBrain was created. A brain of a 65-year old woman based in Europe who did not suffer any neurological problem volunteered that her brain be used for medical purposes upon her death. The team used the preserved brain specimen that arrived in the laboratory of the Institute for Brain Research in Dusseldorf back in 2008. Amunts and a team of anatomists sectioned the three-pound brain specimen and sectioned it into 7,404 slices.
The slices of gray matter were sent to another team of brain scientists and computer scientist who digitized the images and painstakingly created the 3-D model.
The data of BigBrain consist of about 10 trillion bytes of digitized section of the brain that has been made available through the CBRAIN Portal.
"This completely changes the game in terms of our ability to discriminate very fine structural and physiological properties of the human brain," said Alan Evans of the Montreal Neurological Institute and co-author of the study in an interview with the journal Nature.
The details of the human brain that can be seen using the BigBrain 3-D model can serve as a reference brain that can be used by neuroscientists around the world. Experts can take a peek into structures that are particularly involve in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, depression and other disorders.
"The more we understand the components of the machinery, the better position we're in to understand how it works. It's pretty hard to understand how a complex electronic device works if you don't have a good wiring diagram," said Dr. John Mazziotta, a neuroscientist from UCLA.
"People are pretty excited about it. What was needed was a gold standard that would have microscopic resolution. This is it," exclaimed Mazziota.
