Towards multimodal atlases of the human brain

Abstract

Atlases of the human brain have an important impact on neuroscience. The emergence of ever more sophisticated imaging techniques, brain mapping methods and analytical strategies has the potential to revolutionize the concept of the brain atlas. Atlases can now combine data describing multiple aspects of brain structure or function at different scales from different subjects, yielding a truly integrative and comprehensive description of this organ. These integrative approaches have provided significant impetus for the human brain mapping initiatives, and have important applications in health and disease.The concept of the brain atlas is not new1. Cartographic approaches have been used for centuries to identify and target specific regions in the brain and to establish spatial relationships between a coordinate and a structure. Comprehensive maps of brain structure have been created, at a variety of spatial scales, from anatomical specimens2 -5 and various histological preparations that reveal regional cytoarchitecture6 , 7, myelination patterns8 -10, and protein and mRNA distributions. Most early and some more recent atlases of the human brain were derived from one, or at best a few, individual post-mortem specimens3 -5 , 11 -14. Such atlases provide anatomical references or represent a particular feature of the brain15 , 16, such as a specific neurochemical distribution17 or the cellular architecture of the cerebral cortex6. For example, Brodmann's map (1909) exclusively describes the cytoarchitectonic segregation of the cortex6, Dejerine's map (1901) describes fibre tract anatomy18, and the map by Schaltenbrand and Wahren (1977) describes the thalamus14. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptNat Rev Neurosci. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 June 13. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptBeyond these traditional, anatomical atlases based on post-mortem tissue, modern brain atlases are being developed that incorporate flexible, computable systems, which accommodate the sometimes considerable variation in a population. The application of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to acquire detailed descriptions of anatomy in vivo is a driving force in brain mapping research. Tomographic imaging has the advantage of largely retaining the spatial integrity of the data by maintaining the intrinsic three-axis registration and simple volumetric coordinates19 , 20. The atlases derived from these images are digital, allowing a wealth of computational algorithms to be applied to automatically align new twoand three-dimensional imaging data into the coordinate systems of these atlases21. Furthermore, there is an increasing ability to image various structural (as well as functional and chemical) features in the brain such as nuclei, cytoarchitectural details and white matter tracts. Technological advances continue to improve spatial and contrast resolution and have led to multispectral characterization (using MRI) of brain anatomy, reflecting features such as lipid content or water ...

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