scholarly journals Data integration through brain atlasing: Human Brain Project tools and strategies

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 70-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingvild E. Bjerke ◽  
Martin Øvsthus ◽  
Eszter A. Papp ◽  
Sharon C. Yates ◽  
Ludovico Silvestri ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Human Brain Project (HBP), an EU Flagship Initiative, is currently building an infrastructure that will allow integration of large amounts of heterogeneous neuroscience data. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop a unified multi-level understanding of the brain and its diseases, and beyond this to emulate the computational capabilities of the brain. Reference atlases of the brain are one of the key components in this infrastructure. Based on a new generation of three-dimensional (3D) reference atlases, new solutions for analyzing and integrating brain data are being developed. HBP will build services for spatial query and analysis of brain data comparable to current online services for geospatial data. The services will provide interactive access to a wide range of data types that have information about anatomical location tied to them. The 3D volumetric nature of the brain, however, introduces a new level of complexity that requires a range of tools for making use of and interacting with the atlases. With such new tools, neuroscience research groups will be able to connect their data to atlas space, share their data through online data systems, and search and find other relevant data through the same systems. This new approach partly replaces earlier attempts to organize research data based only on a set of semantic terminologies describing the brain and its subdivisions.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatsuya Osaki ◽  
Yoshiho Ikeuchi

AbstractMacroscopic axonal connections in the human brain distribute information and neuronal activity across the brain. Although this complexity previously hindered elucidation of functional connectivity mechanisms, brain organoid technologies have recently provided novel avenues to investigate human brain function by constructing small segments of the brain in vitro. Here, we describe the neural activity of human cerebral organoids reciprocally connected by a bundle of axons. Compared to conventional organoids, connected organoids produced significantly more intense and complex oscillatory activity. Optogenetic manipulations revealed that the connected organoids could re-play and recapitulate over time temporal patterns found in external stimuli, indicating that the connected organoids were able to form and retain temporal memories. Our findings suggest that connected organoids may serve as powerful tools for investigating the roles of macroscopic circuits in the human brain – allowing researchers to dissect cellular functions in three-dimensional in vitro nervous system models in unprecedented ways.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Cody

Brain research is intended to produce valuable results in medicine and information technology. All to the good. Nevertheless, the contentions made by both the BRAIN Initiative and the Human Brain Project are not only unproven, but indefensible. Their most egregious error lies in a doctrinal misconception of what the mind does. The mind is a matter of memory, belief, intention, desire, will, and the like—mentalities.


2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (04) ◽  
pp. 245-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Rosse ◽  
J. F. Brinkley

Summary Objectives: Survey current work primarily funded by the US Human Brain Project (HBP) that involves substantial use of images. Organize this work around a framework based on the physical organization of the body. Methods: Pointers to individual research efforts were obtained through the HBP home page as well as personal contacts from HBP annual meetings. References from these sources were followed to find closely related work. The individual research efforts were then studied and characterized. Results: The subject of the review is the intersection of neuroinformatics (information about the brain), imaging informatics (information about images), and structural informatics (information about the physical structure of the body). Of the 30 funded projects currently listed on the HBP web site, at least 22 make heavy use of images. These projects are described in terms of broad categories of structural imaging, functional imaging, and image-based brain information systems. Conclusions: Understanding the most complex entity known (the brain) gives rise to many interesting and difficult problems in informatics and computer science. Although much progress has been made by HBP and other neuroinformatics researchers, a great many problems remain that will require substantial informatics research efforts. Thus, the HPB can and should be seen as an excellent driving application area for biomedical informatics research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1565
Author(s):  
Sayan Kahali ◽  
Marcus E Raichle ◽  
Dmitriy A Yablonskiy

While significant progress has been achieved in studying resting-state functional networks in a healthy human brain and in a wide range of clinical conditions, many questions related to their relationship to the brain’s cellular constituents remain. Here, we use quantitative Gradient-Recalled Echo (qGRE) MRI for mapping the human brain cellular composition and BOLD (blood–oxygen level-dependent) MRI to explore how the brain cellular constituents relate to resting-state functional networks. Results show that the BOLD signal-defined synchrony of connections between cellular circuits in network-defined individual functional units is mainly associated with the regional neuronal density, while the between-functional units’ connectivity strength is also influenced by the glia and synaptic components of brain tissue cellular constituents. These mechanisms lead to a rather broad distribution of resting-state functional network properties. Visual networks with the highest neuronal density (but lowest density of glial cells and synapses) exhibit the strongest coherence of the BOLD signal as well as the strongest intra-network connectivity. The Default Mode Network (DMN) is positioned near the opposite part of the spectrum with relatively low coherence of the BOLD signal but with a remarkably balanced cellular contents, enabling DMN to have a prominent role in the overall organization of the brain and hierarchy of functional networks.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 320-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taghi Khaniyev ◽  
Samir Elhedhli ◽  
Fatih Safa Erenay

Motivated by the need to solve large hub location problems efficiently and accurately, we discover an important characteristic of optimal solutions to p-hub median problems that we call spatial separability. It refers to the partitioning of the network into allocation clusters with nonoverlapping convex hulls. We illustrate numerically that the property persists over a wide range of randomly generated instances and propose a data-driven approach based on an insight from the property to tackle very large problem sizes. Computational experiments corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in generating high-quality solutions within reasonable computational times. We then explore a new application area of hub location problems in brain connectivity networks and introduce the largest and the first set of three-dimensional instances in the literature. Computational results demonstrate the capability of hub location models in successfully depicting the hub organization of the human brain, as validated by the medical literature, thus revealing that hub location models can play an important role in investigating the intricate connectivity of the human brain.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (31) ◽  
pp. eaba8245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Schiavi ◽  
Mario Ocampo-Pineda ◽  
Muhamed Barakovic ◽  
Laurent Petit ◽  
Maxime Descoteaux ◽  
...  

Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging is a noninvasive imaging modality that has been extensively used in the literature to study the neuronal architecture of the brain in a wide range of neurological conditions using tractography. However, recent studies highlighted that the anatomical accuracy of the reconstructions is inherently limited and challenged its appropriateness. Several solutions have been proposed to tackle this issue, but none of them proved effective to overcome this fundamental limitation. In this work, we present a novel processing framework to inject into the reconstruction problem basic prior knowledge about brain anatomy and its organization and evaluate its effectiveness using both simulated and real human brain data. Our results indicate that our proposed method dramatically increases the accuracy of the estimated brain networks and, thus, represents a major step forward for the study of connectivity.


1997 ◽  
Vol 52 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 279-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Shimizu ◽  
N. Takeda ◽  
S. Yagi

AbstractLevels of a wide range of biogenic amines and related metabolites were determined in the brain of the silk­ worm, Bomby mori, during pupal and adult development using a three-dimensional HPLC system with multiple coulometric electrochemical detection.In the brain of the female adults, metabolic pathways such as tyrosine (TYR-4)->dihydroxyphenylalanine (L -DOPA)-dopamine (DA), TYR-4->tyramine (TYRA), and tryptophan (TRP)->5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) were identified. At this stage, 3,4-dihydroxyphenyleth-ylene (DOPAC) was also detected. Metabolic pathways of biogenic amines in the brain from pupal to adult stages are discussed.


Nature ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 513 (7516) ◽  
pp. 27-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yves Frégnac ◽  
Gilles Laurent

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sayan Kahali ◽  
Marcus E Raichle ◽  
Dmitriy A Yablonskiy

While significant progress has been achieved in studying resting state functional networks in a healthy human brain and in a wide range of clinical conditions, many questions related to their relationship to the brain's cellular constituents remain open. In this paper we use quantitative Gradient Recalled Echo (qGRE) MRI for in vivo quantitative mapping of human brain cellular composition, and BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) MRI resting state data from the Human Connectome Project to explore how the brain cellular constituents relate to resting state functional networks. Our results show that the BOLD-signal-defined synchrony of connections between cellular circuits in network-defined individual functional units is mainly associated with the regional neuronal density, while the strength of the functional connectivity between functional units is influenced not only by the neuronal but also glia and synaptic components of brain tissue cellular constituents. Data show that these cellular-functional relationships are most evident in the infra-slow frequency range (0.01-0.16 Hz) of brain activity, which is known to be linked with fluctuations of the BOLD signal. These mechanisms lead to a rather broad distribution of resting state functional network properties. We found that visual networks with the highest neuronal density (but lowest density of glial cells and synapses) exhibit the strongest coherence of BOLD signal in individual functional units, as well as the strongest intra-network connectivity. The Default Mode Network (DMN) is positioned near the opposite part of the spectrum with relatively low coherence of the BOLD signal but a remarkably balanced cellular content enabling DMN prominent role in the overall organization of the brain and the hierarchy of functional networks in health and disease.


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