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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday July 23 2016, @06:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the zombies-will-know-the-tastiest-parts dept.

A new map of the human cerebral cortex has been created:

A detailed new map by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and associates lays out the landscape of 180 areas of the cerebral cortex in painstaking detail; 97 of these areas have never been previously described.

The new map is intended to help researchers studying brain disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, dementia and epilepsy. They will be able to use it to understand differences in the brains of patients with these diseases, compared with adults who are healthy. It also will accelerate progress in deciphering the workings of the healthy brain and elucidating what makes us unique as a species, the researchers say. The new map will also be vital for neurosurgeons.

A multi-modal parcellation of human cerebral cortex (DOI: 10.1038/nature18933)


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  • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday July 23 2016, @01:38PM

    by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Saturday July 23 2016, @01:38PM (#379041) Homepage Journal

    From the article

    The Human Connectome Project used a powerful, custom-built MRI machine to map the brains of 1,200 young adults

    Wasn't fMRI just debunked for the use case of mapping the brain?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 23 2016, @02:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 23 2016, @02:03PM (#379044)

    Not sure if fMRI was debunked for this use, but, there is ever increasing evidence for brain plasticity -- if some part of the brain is damaged, other parts can reconfigure and the damage is worked around. Many parts of the nervous system that were once thought static after development (late teen ages?) have been shown to be reconfigurable.

    Sorry, don't have links, not my field...but a good friend is in the middle of this science and I hear bits and snatches of interesting results.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by nishi.b on Monday July 25 2016, @11:10AM

    by nishi.b (4243) on Monday July 25 2016, @11:10AM (#379747)

    It is based on diffusion MRI.
    Basically, for each voxel (3D pixel), it will measure the diffusion of water molecules in multiple directions.
    As water molecules are blocked by membranes, they will mostly travel along the fibers (formed by the neurons' axons, dendrites...) and not across them.
    From this data there are multiple methods to reconstruct fiber tracts, and thus how regions are connected to each other in one's brain.
    This is called the connectome (all connections in the brain).
    Of course you can't identify each fiber, just bundles of them.
    You can then compare multiple subjects and find out the common patterns. And from that, you can identify regions in the brain that seem to be connected in a similar way in most subjects.
    A map of brain regions according to the way they are connected.
    Of course there is variation between individuals, but many tracts are common. You can find many images of fiber tracts : https://www.google.fr/search?q=connectome&tbm=isch [google.fr]