A multimodal map of human cortex: areas connected to hearing (red), touch (green) vision (blue) and opposing cognitive systems (light and dark)WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY; MATTHEW GLASSER, DAVID VAN ESSENSince the turn of the 20th century, neuroscientists have been trying to map the human brain. Now, using data from the Human Connectome Project, researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have created a multimodal map of the human cortex that combines data from cortical architecture, function, connectivity, and topography. The map, detailed today (July 20) in Nature, identifies 180 brain areas, 97 of which are new to neuroscience.
“It’s really a breakthrough in mapping the living human brain using [magnetic resonance imaging-based] methods,” neuroscientist Katrin Amunts at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, who was not involved in the work, told The Scientist. “It’s methodically beautiful because it’s a multimodal approach, so it integrates different aspects of brain organization,” she added.
The gold standard for brain mapping is still based on Brodmann’s map, developed in 1909, which divided the cerebral cortex into 50 different areas based on its cellular architecture. But this was based on the study of just a single postmortem human brain. Subsequent maps have improved upon Brodmann’s, but they typically represented only a single modality of brain structure or function and were based on a small number of individuals. Washington University’s ...
