Learning to Swim

I often find that my greatest learning is done when I’m able to equate a new topic to a familiar experience. Recently I was introduced to the Allen Brain Atlas, BrainNavigator, and The Human Connectome Project. In many ways reading through articles and journal entries about the brain atlas and connectome is like learning to swim as a young child. When I began reading I felt intimidated, the impressive information that I found in front of me resembled a body of water before jumping in for the first time. As I continued to read I was overcome by a sense of comfort. The more I understood the new information about the Connectome, and became familiar with the Allen Brain Atlas the more I felt like I was competently stroking through water, learning to swim. What I hope to do in this entry is highlight how anyone can become familiar with the Allen brain Atlas, explain its importance, and describe why The Human Connectome Project will greatly benefit from its technology.

The Allen Brain Atlas and BrainNavigator software are stunning innovations that allow 3-D & 4-D brain navigation, the fourth dimension being time. The software makes it possible for users to manipulate, rotate, magnify, and highlight many structures within the mouse and human brain. Neuroscientists will be able to benefit from this because prior to 3-D brain navigation 2-D neurological photos were the most reliable navigation tools. Prior to 3-D once a neuroscientist completed the difficult task of navigating by way of 2-D pictures they still had no way of determining how deep within a structure they should go to reach a desired location. The Allen Brain Atlas and BrainNavigator not only improve upon outdated methods but they also provide the crucial addition of depth exploration. Before directly immersing yourself into 3-D brain navigation it’s probably best to begin by browsing a few websites to familiarize yourself with the types of structures you will be seeing.

The best place to start learning about these tools would most likely be the opposite of where I started, which was Google.

I found that the Harvard research website of the high-resolution mouse brain atlas is particularly user friendly and allows for a lot of simple clicking and observing. This is a great place to start familiarizing yourself with the types of images you’re going to see in 2-D before moving to more complex sites that may require a more in depth background to successfully navigate. The Harvard website is http://www.hms.harvard.edu/research/brain/3D_atlas_vDemo.html. Once you reach the website if you click on 2-D atlas you’ll be provided with many clearly labeled pictures of mouse brain cross-sections.

To navigate these websites no knowledge is required, but to gain maximum insight from the brain navigator software a basic understanding of neuroanatomy and the functions associated with the various lobes is helpful. Those who will benefit the most from brain navigation innovations are neuroscientists in an academic setting, and medical researchers working to cure neurological disorders. Currently a large amount of time and attention has been placed on The Human Connectome Project. The Human Connectome Project is a research project directed towards creating a functional map of the complete structural and neural connections in vivo within and across individuals (www.humanconnectomeproject.org).

The Human Connectome Project is the next crucial step in an attempt to understand human theory of mind. Often times it seems as if what dictates who we are as conscious individuals is left up to the notion that there is some intangible force controlling us. The idea that each person is born with a soul and how we express our thoughts, preferences, dislikes, and emotions is controlled by that soul. The Human Connectome Project could be the answer to the age-old question of “what makes us tick?” As we continue to discover new information neuroscientists can make use of the Allen Brain Atlas to precisely map exactly where connections are made using 3-D, and use 4-D to determine how early those connections can be seen during neural development.

There has been a lot of progress made since the time of Ramon Y Cajal, but just as Golgi staining was a revolutionary tool used to radically change neuroscience so are the Allen Brain Atlas, BrainNavigator, and Human Connectome Project. What we see today can very well be the stepping-stones to unimaginable discoveries in the field of neuroscience.