Scientists recently revealed the largest and most detailed atlas of the human brain. This human brain map shows how over 3,300 different types of brain cells are organized and work together.
Ed Lein, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and one of the leading authors of five of these papers, explains that this isn’t just an ordinary map. It is like opening a new door to a whole new area of study. Now, scientists can examine the brain with incredibly high detail, even in species where this was previously very challenging.
Part of BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network
The research was part of a big project funded by the National Institutes of Health, called the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network, or BICCN. This project began in 2017 and had a mission to make a list of all different types of cells in the brains of mice, humans, and certain monkeys.
These cells include neurons, which are the brain cells that communicate with each other using chemicals and electricity. There are about as many non-neuronal cells as there are neurons. These non-neuronal cells are like the brain’s support team.
They help with structure, provide nutrients, and protect neurons. They also help control how neurons send messages. An adult human brain has around eighty-six billion neurons, plus or minus about eight billion, and another eighty-four billion or so of these non-neuronal cells.
Use of transcriptomics and epigenomics
The BICCN human brain atlas made use of advanced methods mostly previously utilized in animals. Mattia Maroso, a senior editor for the journal Science, mentioned this in a special issue published on October 12, 2023.
Scientists employed two key techniques. One was transcriptomics, which refers to producing a list of all the RNA in individual brain cells. RNA is like a genetic messenger that carries instructions for building proteins. It also carries out other important tasks.
The second technique was epigenomics. They looked at chemical tags on DNA that control how genes work. In the BICCN, individual studies included data from hundreds of thousands to millions of brain cells.
Results given out by combining the two techniques
By using these methods, scientists were able to create detailed maps of individual brain cells in developing adult human brains, as well as those of marmosets and macaques, which are types of primates. They also studied the brains of chimpanzees and gorillas.
This research allowed them to directly compare human brains with those of non-human primates. The findings revealed that the many types of cells in our brains are also present in chimpanzees and gorillas, as reported by The New York Times.
However, even though we have the same types of cells, the way our genes work in these cells seems to be quite different in humans and apes. This leads to differences in how these cells communicate with each other.
In 21 papers published as a package Thursday, researchers have provided a new map of the human brain, refining the resolution, as one scientist described it, from a rough outline of a shoreline to a satellite view with topography.
They're still far from a GPS guide to what's… pic.twitter.com/pIekWSaAhX
— TheMacroSift.eth (@themacrosift) October 13, 2023
According to Trygve Bakken, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute who contributed to the primate studies, “It’s really the connections—how these cells are talking to each other—that makes us different from the chimpanzees.”
More research underway to discover function of deep brain cells
Even though the human brain atlas is incredibly detailed, it is like a rough draft. In the future, scientists aim to determine what the newly discovered brain cells do, especially in relation to ones deep within the brain, such as in the brain stem, as mentioned in Nature. They also hope to learn how genes in various cells play a role in causing neurological diseases.
“If we want to understand what makes us human and the mechanisms responsible for the development of neurological disorders,” scientists said in reference to newly published studies on the topic, “we first need to have a deep knowledge of the human brain at the cellular level, which is exactly what this collection of papers from the BICCN is about.”
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