Brain Exploration of the Future: The Magic School Bus Goes Full Speed Ahead

If Ms. Frizzle were still teaching today, she would be thrilled with some of the newest projects and navigation tools for her Magic School Bus. For while she has navigated her students through the digestive system, circulatory system, immune system, and muscles, she has left the brain untouched. What if we could take her class on a ride into the brain; the complex system of neurons, axons, dendrites, and structures that make us who we are? Maybe in the 90’s this would have been unimaginable, but today, BrainNavigator and the Human Connectome Project (HCP) make this field trip a possibility.

Since the second century, the brain has intrigued many different groups of people, but due to complications in navigating this intricate and messy organ, the brain has been uncharted for much of history. However, recent advances in technology have led to a revolutionary program, BrainNavigator, that gives us 3-D web access to virtually travel through the intricate structures of the brain. After updating her bus with this device (available for download at http://www.brainnav.com/nav3d), Ms. Frizzle can locate structures and rotate them in any plane to fully grasp the physical characteristics of the destination. Although the creators of this program may have used cutting-edge methods to create these 3-D models, anyone who can type in “hippocampus” (the structure most associated with memory), or any other structure of interest, can manipulate the images on the screen to gain a more comprehensive understanding of this brain structure.

With BrainNavigator, Ms. Frizzle could visualize the hippocampus and its location in the medial temporal lobe in 3-D, but how would she get her bus there? This is where the Human Connectome Project (HCP) comes into play (more information at http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/). Using different neuroimaging techniques such as Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Brainbow (more about the techniques at http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Connectome), the creators of this project are attempting to identify all of the 10¹⁴ synaptic connections in the brain and supply this information in a comprehensive on-line database. Mr. Frizzle’s students could learn not only about the structure of the hippocampus, but also track the highways and exits of white matter to reach this destination. Without this project, entering through the nostrils and driving through the catastrophe of white matter webs would be insurmountable, but we’re getting closer to a smoother, more direct ride.

While the HCP is yet to be complete and it may be a while before Ms. Frizzle’s students can steer through the brain, this large database allows for a broader scope of analysis and neuroscientists are beginning to formulate new questions as a consequence. For example, investigating the maze of proteins, changes in synapse length, enlargement of ventricles, and the buildup of plaque along the path to the hippocampus in a patient with Alzheimer’s disease could provide a better understanding of the defects in diseased individuals. The accessibility and the possibility of discovery make this an exciting program for all, from curious individuals such as Ms. Frizzle and her students to highly-trained neuroscientists.

So, as we wait for the completion of these programs, go ahead and start exploring. Plan a field trip into the brain; get ready for an extraordinary ride through the most complex and fascinating organ in our bodies.

Jenny Moyer