Scientists have new pictures of the work of brain neurons
34 scientists from the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle completed the creation of the first comprehensive map of the mammalian brain, as they announced on April 2 in the journal Nature Neuroscience . Map detail shows the relationship between the cells of the mouse brain - neurons, which she has about 71 million a >. h5>
To create a map, the researchers injected fluorescent green virus in a specific area of the brain of live mice. Virus infected neurons near the injection site, and three weeks later distributed throughout the brain. Below the map interactions occurring in one of the areas of the brain, the displayed as a green fluorescent mesh infected neurons. Among other functions, this area of the brain responsible for the interpretation of certain sensations, especially the sense of touch.
Once the virus has spread, scientists seized the brain of the mouse and made it the pictures in different ways, ultimately get about 1 terabyte of data. Following the path of the virus and analysis of images created to incredibly small scales, the researchers got a picture of how the infected area interacts with the entire brain. For example, here's 3D visualization relationships between the four regions responsible for vision in the cerebral cortex of the mouse (green, yellow, red, orange). In a press release the study reported that these areas are closely interlinked with each other and with neighboring regions in the thalamus of the brain (pink) and midbrain (purple).
Once scientists have made a map image of neural connections in one area of the brain, they repeated the process with all the other sites. Total researchers analyzed nearly 1,700 images of mice, but the study is based on only 469 of them. Below visualization of the data, which includes the relationship of several areas of the brain:
The obtained data can also be represented in a circular chart. This diagram shows the relationship between the 215 regions of the brain of the mouse. Outgoing interconnection of 11 specific areas of the brain highlighted in different colors, the rest grayed.
Additional interesting information:
1. Brain Explorer 2 from the team of scientists from the Allen Institute for Brain Science - with the help of this software you can explore the 3D atlas of the human the brain.
2. Interactive map mouse brain.
