Indian Scientists Produce Most Detailed 3D Atlas of the Human Brainstem
- Reference: 0184452778
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/07/14/0723207/indian-scientists-produce-most-detailed-3d-atlas-of-the-human-brainstem
- Source link:
> Built from high-resolution microscope images rather than costlier molecular techniques, it creates a detailed three-dimensional map of the brainstem, identifying more than 200 clusters of brain cells and nerve pathways. Eight chemical markers help distinguish different cell types, producing one of the clearest pictures yet of this vital, but poorly, understood part of the brain. The brainstem occupies only a sliver of the brain, yet it keeps people alive. It links the brain to the spinal cord and controls breathing, heartbeat, sleep, wakefulness and movement.
>
> [...] Users can zoom from the whole brainstem seen on MRI down to individual neurons while maintaining their precise spatial relationships. The researchers have made the atlas [2]freely available online , hoping it becomes a reference tool for neuroscientists, neurologists and neurosurgeons worldwide. Its applications could also extend well beyond anatomy. By comparing healthy brainstem maps with diseased tissue, scientists may better understand disorders ranging from Parkinson's disease and stroke to Alzheimer's disease and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). More precise maps could also help neurosurgeons navigate one of the brain's most delicate regions with greater confidence.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg53l737v1qo
[2] https://anchor.humanbrain.in/
"The" or "A"? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't want to diminish the accomplishment; that seems like a very cool dataset and probably one that was really fiddly to pull together; but, if you are talking single-neuron resolution; I am curious about whether you can still call an individual sample "the human brainstem" rather than "a human brainstem" and what comparative purposes you can use it for without running into trouble with cases where there are multiple ways for a brainstem to be adequately healthy, so long as certain requirements are met, so you'll need considerably more samples to draw useful inferences about exactly what the problem abnormality is.
Same sort of thing as when "sequencing the human genome" was a big project. Obviously a major exercise in gene sequencing and a basis for situating subsequent sequencing operations; but once you start talking detail there isn't 'the human genome'; literally everyone has one; and it turns out that different differences matter or don't at radically different levels.
Presumably the methods used to do it once will be helpful in doing it more often in the future; but I'll be curious what we discover about the balance of 'normalcy' vs. some relatively subtle and confusing combination of surprisingly variable ways to have a brainstem that seems to work just fine along with surprisingly subtle, no ghastly big lesions, ways to have one that ends up being totally dodgy.
Re: (Score:2)
It says "combines more than 500 tissue sections from foetal, childhood and adult brains" so it isn't even of "a human brainstem"
Re: (Score:2)
The brainstem is probably rather invariant between people. That's an area where differences are likely to be fatal.
Come on (Score:1)
We are talking about the guys that cannot close the hatch on a submarine or form a well written git commit message?
All we need (Score:2)
> controls breathing, heartbeat, sleep, wakefulness and movement.
All that we need for c-suite employees. Let's go with it!
Put it in a book, you cowards (Score:2)
There is a marvelous book that I look at in the library every year or so: "The brain stem of the cat; a cytoarchitectonic atlas with stereotaxic coordinates", Berman, Alvin L.; Madison, University of Wisconsin Press; 1968, 175 pages 80 illustrations *59 cm*. Yeah, the book is 2 feet tall, much larger than any of my computer screens.
Alzheimer's (Score:2)
Wasn't there recently an article about how after 3 injections into mouse brains with human cells that they'd reversed Alzheimer's? It turned out it was fatty buildup in the brain.