After staining and digitizing the thousands of plastic-wrap-like slices, the nearly cellular resolution map revealed the network of layers, fibers and microcircuits of the woman’s brain.
While variation exists among brains, across ages and individuals, they have largely the same distribution of brain structures and anatomy, said author Alan Evans of McGill University’s Montreal Neurological Institute. There are “subtle shape changes among individuals,” but all atlases start from one representative brain and go from there.
The team was chiefly limited by computing power and capacity. To map the human brain with 1 micron spatial resolution, which has been done for mouse brains, the atlas would take up 21,000 terabytes of data — essentially rendering it impossible to navigate. By comparison, BigBrain, with its 20 micron resolution, comprises about a terabyte of data. Prior MRI-based atlases had resolution of 1 millimeter.
Richard Leigh, a Johns Hopkins neurologist, said he’s looking forward to test-driving BigBrain for his research on stroke recovery. With the microscopic detail available, Leigh can see which particular groups of neurons are growing through stroke treatment rather than just a general fuzzy area.
Evans was in Seattle on Wednesday working with the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who has committed $500 million since its start in 2003, the Allen Institute has assembled a less-detailed human brain atlas of its own.
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