Scientist in Allen Institute for Brain Science, in Seattle, Washington released the first ever computerized map of the brain in the world after more than four years of cutting edge research.
The interactive research tool was called Human Brain Atlas, this tool is said to help scientist in understanding how the brain works and aid new discoveries in disease and treatments for brain.
The data used to build the tool comes from the analysis of two human brains and it was done by using magnetic resonance imaging or MRI and a variation of MRI called diffusion tensor imaging.
CEO of the Institute, Allan Jones told how they were able to come up with this tool. He narrated how they chopped up the brains into small pieces, and extract RNA from the tissue. He explained that they used the RNA to obtain a read out of the 25,000 genes in the human genome.
Such information’s were used by the scientist to create the first ever computerized map of the brain. The tools is capable of giving the one thousand anatomical sites in the brain which is supported by more than 100 million data points that indicate the gene expression and biochemistry of each site.
In the research, scientist had found out that 82 percent of all human genes are expressed in the brain.
The project costs about 55 million dollars. The two brains use in the study both comes from male which became a question to many why female brain were not included in the study. Allan explained that eligible donor of brain; usually die from accidental causes or cardiac arrest which is most likely to happen in men. He also added that they are already in the process of using a female brain for the following studies.
As of now researchers are also attempting to make a map of neural connections in a mouse brain which is something that MRI cannot do.