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Creating a Roadmap to the Brain
3-D Database to Offer Researchers Unprecedented Details
 Listen to Michelle Trudeau's report on the latest, most sophisticated effort to map the human brain.
Nov. 19, 2001 -- A group of brain "cartographers" is collecting tens of thousands of images from across the world to create the most detailed and sophisticated computer atlas of the human brain ever assembled.
NPR’s Michelle Trudeau, reporting for All Things Considered, recently visited the laboratory of the human brain atlas project in California.
The human brain is a three-pound pinkish-grey mass made up of billions of nerve cells constantly at work exchanging electrical and chemical messages. When completed, the brain atlas project, based at UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, will display the brain's anatomy and models of how it functions.
Making such a brain atlas is an audacious enterprise, costing $15 million -- at last estimate -- and enlisting dozens of scientists from around the world.
Project director Arthur Toga says the road map is much needed to replace the current atlas, which was based on the brain of just one person. One brain, say neuroscientists, can't begin to serve as a model for the billions of brains on the planet.
That's why the new atlas will be compiled from brain scans of 7,000 healthy individuals from nine different countries, representing a cross-section of the global population. When completed, scientists and physicians will be able to go online and use the 3-D atlas to compare -- or contrast -- all sorts of information about the human brain, with specialty maps categorized by age, gender, genetic background and more.
The atlas also gives scientists a wonderful database of normal brain scans to compare diseased populations against, such as those with Alzheimer's disease or schizophrenia, says Toga.
At Toga's lab, banks of sleek black computers the size of industrial refrigerators are analyzing and transforming tens of thousands of brain images sent by collaborating researchers.
The computers, bearing the label of "Reality Monster" across their front panels,
are combining all of the subjects together into various atlases, creating visual and statistical data researchers can interact with.
When the atlas is finished, the intricate, exquisite, interactive 3-D color maps will be a composite model of the "typical, healthy brain" -- with all its amazing complex geometry and geography.
Other Resources
• Read more about LONI's work with the brain at its Web site.
Images and animations created and provided by the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Dr. Arthur W. Toga, Director.
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