Researchers use a special tool called a microtome to cut sections from a brain preserved in paraffin wax into tiny slivers 20-micrometers thick. / Image courtesy of Amunts, Evans et al. , Zilles
LONDON: Scientists have finely sliced a human brain into 7,400 wafer-thin sheets and reconstructed it to create the world’s most detailed map of the brain in three dimensions.
The “Big Brain” project, which took a 65-year-old woman’s brain and cut it into slices 20 micrometres thick smaller than the size of one fine strand of hair shows the brain’s anatomy in microscopic detail, almost down to a cellular level, said the scientists. A micrometre, or micron, is a millionth of a metre.
The 3D reference brain will allow researchers worldwide to study the brain in unprecedented physical detail, paving the way for deeper understanding of how processes like cognition and emotions work, and how brain diseases develop.
“This is big science comes to the brain,” said Dr Alan Evans, professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who co-led the project. “We’ve raised the level of insight (by) orders of magnitude. This data will revolutionise our ability to understand internal brain organisation.”
Using a microtome, the researchers from Canada and Germany sliced the brain, which had been embedded in paraffin wax, into more than 7,400 section, mounted the sections onto slides, stained them to detect cell structures and digitised them with a high-resolution scanner so that the model could be reconstructed.
Reuters
