Researchers recently published the most complete map of the human brain to date, offering new potential for studying neurological diseases. Maya Springhawk Robnett of the Arizona Science Desk reports…The Human Connectome Project at Washington University in St. Louis scanned and studied the brains of more than a thousand healthy adults. With this data, researchers mapped 180 regions of the brain, 97 of which were previously undiscovered.
The healthy brains of twins were studied in the project. Twins’ brains are similar to each other, structurally, which allowed the researchers to pinpoint the regions. This baseline now gives researchers a better map to compare brains affected by Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and a host of other neurological and mental afflictions.
The algorithm developed from the research also allows doctors to scan and identify where the regions are in an individual brain, specific to each person.
The lead author is neuroscientist Dr. Matthew Glasser. He says this map creates numerous possibilities for future research, but there also are immediate applications in the medical field. “They may have a brain tumor or some other epileptic focus that they need to remove from the brain," Glasser says, "but they want to be very careful not to damage the brain areas that are involved in things like movement or understanding or production of speech. And so, being able to give them a very detailed and precise map that’s based on an individual should be very useful."
Dr. Suraj Muley, a neurologist with Barrow Neurological Institute, wasn’t involved in the research but says it’s been needed for a while, especially because until now neurologists couldn’t track degeneration of the brain. “In Alzheimer’s disease," Muley explains, "very early on the brain remains normal-looking. But if we can know exactly which area to look at and follow that area over time, it will help us in diagnosis and also in monitoring the disease to a certain extent.”
The Human Connectome Project was a collaborative effort of more than fifty individuals from Washington University in St. Louis, Oxford University, and the University of Minnesota, among others.