Scientists Unveil Worlds First Computerized Human Brain Map

An anonymous reader writes "US scientists on Tuesday unveiled the world's first computerized human brain map, an online public resource developed to accelerate understanding of how the human brain works and in hopes to tackle neurological diseases like Alzeimer's and Parkinson's. Funded by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, the 55-million-US dollar project, named the Allen Human Brain Atlas, identifies 1,000 anatomical sites in the human brain, backed by more than 100 million data points that indicate the particular gene expression and underlying biochemistry of each site, said the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Brain Science. The human brain map released so far is only male."

Comments

Only male?

[mangu]

Makes sense, they didn't want to start with a variable map.

Re:Female brain already mapped.

[lobiusmoop]

I was expecting something like this

1000 whole sites

[DeBattell]

1000 whole sites. Too bad the brain has something like 100 trillion synapses. So that means each site contains an average of about 100 billion synapses. I want a higher resolution map.

Re:1000 whole sites

[delineal]

Isn't that overkill? 640K sites ought to be enough for anyone!

Re:1000 whole sites

[hedwards]

1,000 is probably on the low side ultimately, but with 100b synapses, you'd be averaging about 100m per structure. That's thoroughly unscientific, but you'd expect to have a fairly substantial number per structure. Otherwise minor damage to anything anywhere in the brain would be catastrophic.

Re:1000 whole sites

[gmuslera]

Considering how flexible is the brain (people recovering functionality after damage in zones associated with something), probably is a something great that then managed to identify physical places that are the same for everyone (ok, at least for every man).

now if only

[Hermanas]

Now if only we had a computerized brain to analyze the computerized brain map...

It reminds me of the quote attributed to Emerson M. Pugh,

"If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't."

That could be extremely useful.

[jd]

The BBC is reporting that brain scans can detect Alzheimers decades before symptoms show. If you couple the two studies together, you should be able to identify what biochemistry is related to those specific areas that are thinning and no others. In further news, five more genes linked to the disease have now been identified. One of them turns out to be also linked to the immune system - which is interesting, since one of the key processes involved is the production of tau protein tangles which literally crush areas of the brain to death and toxic substances in the brain (such as aluminium) are known to trigger that process.

It has always struck me that it had to be an immune response of some sort, since the tau proteins "contain" these contaminants, but I'd pictured it as being an archaic response (there's no evolutionary advantage in being dead, but there is an evolutionary advantage in single-cell and simple multi-cell organisms being able to detox). There's nothing in the BioNews article to suggest the mutation is a regression bug, though it's not exactly chock-full of details on things like how old the regions involved are.

Anyways, with now ten genes identified, a region identified as pre-symptom Alzheimers, and a knowledge of the genes and chemistry of that part of the brain, it should be possible to do quite a bit.

Re:That could be extremely useful.

[ue85]

MRI shows anatomical changes and thus until there are gross physical changes in the brain you won't be able to detect such disease processes. MRI is wonderful for brain imaging, as it can differentiate between gray and white matter better than any other modalities but given the cost per scan, time required per scan and long queue of higher priority patients (stroke, head trauma, etc) it isn't effective given its low sensitivity. While I am biased towards Molecular Imaging a lot of focus has been on Pittsburgh compound B for imaging amyloid plaques. This type of imaging has the advantage of being extremely sensitive and specific however the cost and availability are even greater than that of MRI. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners aren't widely available and where they are it is mainly reserved for oncology. Many theories for Alzheimer's disease exist but given the evidence linked to beta-amyloid mechanisms I don't think the missing link is some unknown mechanism but rather no cost effective way of dealing with it considering preventative treatments exist but are limited and no intervention exists to reverse the effects. That and there are a number of non-Alzheimer's dementias that people are less aware of.

Re:Cute, but meh.

[dogmatixpsych]

And yet some of us (including myself) make our living doing just that - virtually slicing the brain (images of it) into sections and seeing how areas of the brain relate with behavior. Some of us (myself included) look at not just the discrete areas but also the "wiring". Don't worry, the wiring maps of the brain are in the works too.

Re:Female brain already mapped.

[ustolemyname]

int Random(int max)
{
// implement random number generation later, after we refactor again
if (max > 3)
return 3;
else
throw CantReturnThreeException;
}