A group of scientists from Germany and Canada have developed the most detailed map of the human brain in history, called BigBrain, from the 3D digital reconstruction of the brain of a 65-year-old woman. This new tool, presented in the journal Science, shows for the first time in microscopic detail the anatomy of the brain in order to advance the field of neuroscientific research.
Researchers from Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf (Germany) and McGill University in Montreal (Canada) took 10 years to develop this model of the human brain, which provides an unprecedented view of its structure and cellular level. The sample was made from the brain of a 65-year-old deceased donor, with no palpable signs of degenerative disease or other damage, by cutting the thickness of a human hair until 7,400 thin slices of brain were obtained, since, according to the lead author of the project, Katrin Amunts, the thickness could lead to a loss of precision in the details of the brain organ. In total, more than 1,000 hours were spent on this process.
Study co-author Alan Evans was in charge of reconstructing the thousands of layers and correcting the cracks that appeared during cutting to obtain the reference model. Even so, its promoters intend to obtain more brain samples of different human patterns in order to observe the differences between brains of different sexes or ages.
BigBrain is part of the European Human Brain Project, which seeks to advance the development of digital brain models, and its discoverers plan to make it available to the public through an Internet portal, with the aim of helping researchers around the world interested in neuroscientific advances.