neuroimaging
Big Data and Imaging Analysis Yields High-Res Brain Map
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Caption: Map of 180 areas in the left and right hemispheres of the cerebral cortex.
Credit: Matthew F. Glasser, David C. Van Essen, Washington University Medical School, Saint Louis, Missouri
Neuroscientists have been working for a long time to figure out how the human brain works, and that has led many through the years to attempt to map its various regions and create a detailed atlas of their complex geography and functions. While great progress has been made in recent years, existing brain maps have remained relatively blurry and incomplete, reflecting only limited aspects of brain structure or function and typically in just a few people.
In a study reported recently in the journal Nature, an NIH-funded team of researchers has begun to bring this map of the human brain into much sharper focus [1]. By combining multiple types of cutting-edge brain imaging data from more than 200 healthy young men and women, the researchers were able to subdivide the cerebral cortex, the brain’s outer layer, into 180 specific areas in each hemisphere. Remarkably, almost 100 of those areas had never before been described. This new high-resolution brain map will advance fundamental understanding of the human brain and will help to bring greater precision to the diagnosis and treatment of many brain disorders.
Explaining the Traveler’s First-Night Sleep Problem
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Stock photo/Wavebreakmedia Ltd
This past weekend, I attended a scientific meeting in New York. As often seems to happen to me in a hotel, I tossed and turned and woke up feeling not very rested. The second night I did a bit better. Why is this? Using advanced neuroimaging techniques to study volunteers in a sleep lab, NIH-funded researchers have come up with a biological explanation for this phenomenon, known as “the first-night effect.”
As it turns out, the first night when a person goes to sleep in a new place, a portion of the left hemisphere of his or her brain remains unusually active, apparently to stay alert for any signs of danger. The new findings not only provide important insights into the function of the human brain, they also suggest methods to prevent the first-night effect and thereby help travelers like me in our ongoing quest to get a good night’s sleep.
BRAIN: Launching America’s Next Moonshot
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Some have called it America’s next moonshot. Indeed, like the historic effort that culminated with the first moon landing in 1969, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is a bold, ambitious endeavor that will require the energy of thousands of our nation’s most creative minds working together over the long haul.
Our goal? To produce the first dynamic view of the human brain in action, revealing how its roughly 86 billion neurons and its trillions of connections interact in real time. This new view will revolutionize our understanding of how we think, feel, learn, remember, and move, transforming efforts to help the more than 1 billion people worldwide who suffer from autism, depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and other devastating brain disorders.
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