The Human Brain in Exquisite Detail

Scientists create BigBrain—an ultrahigh resolution 3–D model of the human think-box.

ruth williams
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Microtome slicing a human brainAMUNTS, ZILLES, EVANS, ET AL.Researchers have painstakingly stained, imaged, aligned, and digitally reconstructed thousands of ultra-thin slices of a human brain to give the most high-resolution 3–D model of the organ ever created, according to a paper published online today (June 20) in Science.

“It’s a tour-de-force and a monumental amount of work,” said Arthur Toga, director of the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the work. “It allows observation down into the cytoarchitectural level in a comprehensive way, which really hasn’t been done before,” he said. “That’s enormously valuable.”

A previous 3–D brain atlas devised by Korbian Brodmann at the beginning of the 20th century, and that is still used today, provides only gross identification of distinct architectural areas of the brain’s cortex, while more recent models based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are limited by poor resolution. “The spatial resolution [of MRI] is just 1 mm in each direction . . . [which] does not allow for ...

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  • ruth williams

    Ruth Williams

    Ruth is a freelance journalist.
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