Updated: 28/04/2020
The new map will help scientists better understand the new unknown areas of the human brain.
A team of researchers created the most detailed map of the human brain, skull radiographs using more than 100 people, to identify nearly 100 new regions of the cerebral cortex.
The new map defines 180 cortical areas, which helps scientists to understand better how we think, talk or feel, giving them new information about conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and dementia.
,, The brain is like a computer that can support any operating system and can run any software, "said neurologist David Van Essen, the University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Washington.
,, In fact, the operation mode is related to the structure of the brain. If you want to know what the brain can do, you should know as organized and connected, '' added the American scientist.
To build the map, the researchers used information from the Human Connectome project, a study was conducted long-term and consisted in the creation of over 1,200 radiographs of young adults with a custom MRI.
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Information in this group, the researchers examined radiographs of 210 people, men and women. The radiographs were recorded measurements of the participants' cerebral cortex, the area that controls memory, thinking, speaking and consciousness.
Volunteers brain was scanned at rest and when the participant carry light loads, to be able to measure brain activity effectively.
By using an algorithm specially developed by researchers at Oxford University in Britain, scientists were able to identify distinct parts of the brain.
To ensure that the results are correct, scientists compared them with those obtained from investigations made on another group of 210 people.
Over 180 new regions were discovered in each of the two hemispheres of the brain. 83 have been identified in previous research, and other 97 new zones have been identified in the new study.
,, There is a clear distinction between new parts discovered. In fact, the transition is gradual, indicating a mixture and coordination between different sensory modalities and cognitive domains, "said the scientists.
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Some regions are more understandable than others. One of the regions 55b is activated when we hear a story being related to language. Other researchers, however, are new and hard to understand, because some areas are related to many functions of the brain, which mean it takes a long time until specialists can understand the whole map of the brain.
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Source; Science Alert
