Watching the brain in action - science

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Watching the brain in action Just imagine being able to surf through the brain and its 86 billion neurons - well now you can. Scientists have developed the first high-definition 3D model of a complete human brain - it is called Big Brain. Researchers from Canada and Germany have constructed the 3D digital model based upon the preserved brain of a 65-year-old woman that had been preserved in wax. It was sliced into ultra-thin sections. The scientists then used modern brain imaging technologies to analyse each individual piece after which the sections were put back together into the highest possible resolution 3D digital model. Katrin Amunts, the project leader at the Forschungszentrum in Jülich, said: "The Big Brain is a three-dimensional atlas of the human brain with microscopic resolution. We had to make ​​more than 7,500 histological sections of a human brain, which then were reconstructed three-dimensionally. Which means that finally we have a mass which we can study. Actually it works just the way we do with Google Earth, where we can also zoom in to specific cities, look at certain roads. The brain atlas is quite similar." The research was recently published in the journal Science and can be accessed freely online. At 50 times the resolution of any available anatomical atlas of the organ, the project will give scientists the most sophisticated look at the structures that underlie aspects of the brain, ranging from cognition and language to ageing and disease.

Published 2014-10-06 · Watch on YouTube ↗
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