At the cellular level brain atlas extraction The process has so far been limited to much smaller animals or smaller parts of the human brain, due to the enormous time and technical complexity required to map the entire human brain. However, with a new study Modify it could be the subject.

Researchers from Columbia University and the Icahn School of Medicine, 180 billion cells and census, they will work together on a project to create a detailed map of the entire human brain, including census. With the data to be obtained at the end of the research, how the structure and organization of the brain leads to behaviour, emotion and cognition in illness and health. of grip reported to be possible.

Your brain is mapped, just like Google Earth

Elizabeth Hillman, PhD, the Herbert and Florence Irving Professor at the Columbia Zuckerman Institute and the project leader, said in a statement on the project that new tools are responsible for the most notable advances in the history of science. “Next one five years iIn China, we are developing technologies that enable rapid, large-scale imaging of tens or even hundreds of human brains. The unprecedented wealth of data we hope to generate is about the human brain. previously inaccessible should open the way to knowledge.” saves as.

Dr. To get Hillman and his collaborators to carry out this ambitious project, the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN initiative recently $9.1 million reportedly awarded a grant. It is reported that this funding will be shared by Columbia University, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Carnegie Mellon University.

“If it works, our microscope the whole human brain in a few days should be able to view with mobile details” Using the words of Dr. Hillman, “This data is for the brain. like google earth and will enable the analysis of patterns and distributions of different human brain cells at very different length scales. † saves as. However, Hillman said there are both differences and similarities between his projects and Google Earth, which compared the number of cells in the brain to eight billion people in the world. more than 180 billion points out that this is the case.

If the team succeeds, it will only take a few days to map the entire brain.

However, the team is not only concerned with counting cells in the brain. Therefore, the team’s top priority is to: diversity of different cell types It is said that it is to develop a brain map that the for this matter “We know that the brain contains billions of neurons, but there are many different subtypes of neurons,” Hillman noting, “How many are there, how are they organized and how do they differ between different brain regions and different people. very unknown.” d.Iye also adds your words.

The brain, on the other hand, is not just made up of neurons. The brain network includes other cell types, including some glial cells and the cells that make up the brain’s vascular system. each for normal brain functions of these cell typesThere is speculation that the disease may also contain important clues as to what went wrong with the disease.

With regard to this matter, Hillman “To make these datasets really useful, we need to scan the whole brain. capture as much information as possible We have to find a way.” expressions used. Hillman also points out that, if successful, their microscope could image the entire human brain in cellular detail in just a few days.

Hillman developed a new microscope technique for this brain atlas extraction project. develops. This one Human Brain Optimized Light Slab (HOLiS) The team, dubbed the microscope, notes that they chose this name to emphasize the importance of holistic imaging and analysis of the human brain.

So how does the brain mapping process work?

The first step in the imaging process, Carefully cut the brain into sections 5 millimeters thick and includes processing them to make them fully transparent. To accomplish this feat, the specialty of Zhuhao Wu, the project’s assistant principal investigator and assistant professor in Mount Sinai’s Laboratory of Nervous Systems, Structures and Genetics, Dr. Wus; It is said to have optimized a method to cleanse the human brain. The method in question analyzes each part of the brain, individual cells based on their different colors and their describe the different functions It includes a step that can mark it with a series of fluorescent labels that makes it possible.

Then the HOLIS microscope, which we mentioned above, comes into play. To create huge, technical 3D color images of every part of the brain lightning fast HOLiS employee; The technique works by projecting laser light onto the tissue to create a layer of light that illuminates a very thin inclined plane. Meanwhile under the microscope a fast camera it captures an image of the same plane and by moving the brain part at a constant speed, successive images of each plane are merged together to create a long 3D block. The tissue is then scanned again before moving on to the next stage.

The human brain will be analyzed more broadly than ever before

Hillman underlined that it will take many years to attempt to image the entire human brain with the conventionally available tools.“We hope that our HOLiS system can image a whole brain in about a week.” saves as. Thanks to this kind of speed, the whole neuroimaging thing is more than a one-off proof-of-concept, technology that can image hundreds of brains Hillman stated it will evolve“We suspect that every brain will be very different, so we need to be able to image a lot of brains to understand the diversity of brains across the lifespan and ultimately discover a wide variety of diseases and conditions.” he says.

At this point, however, there is an obstacle for the team. The team found that each brain atlas study was a huge amount. two petabytes wait for it to generate data. To provide a solution to this problem, it is said that the employees at the Pittsburgh Super Computing Center in Carnegie Mellon will help the team convert these data streams into user-friendly databases that can be more manageable, searchable, analyzed and compared.

Finally, if the process is in order, the human brain will become more powerful than ever before. on a large scale Hillman stated that a basic database can be created to analyze“Having this data will aid our efforts to understand what often goes right in the human brain and what goes wrong in developmental, neurological and psychiatric disorders. should speed up† † He points out the importance of his work.