Human brain prosciutto builds up 3D atlas

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV

Imagine being able to zoom into a human brain in extreme detail as you would navigate through Google Earth. This summer, a digital brain atlas being developed by neuroanatomist Jacopo Annese and his team from University of California, San Diego, will be available online, allowing people to interact with the brain's anatomy down to the level of the cell.

The digital display is being created from slices of the brain of Henry Gustav Molaison, who lost his ability to form new long-term memories after a brain operation to treat epilepsy. By working with his brain, the team are building a 3D model in much higher resolution than is possible from MRI scans.

To prepare a brain for dissection, it is first preserved in a process that takes months and then frozen. Next it is placed in a motorised tissue slicer specially built by Annese and his team to accommodate an organ as big as the brain (see video). A blade peels away layers about as thick as a human hair, which look like super-thin slices of prosciutto. They are collected with a paintbrush and placed in a salty solution. The sections are then laid out on glass slides so that they can be stained once dry. The purple dye used in the video stains genetic material in each cell, making fine anatomical structures visible.

Later, each slice is digitised using a microscope scanner built in-house before a computer reconstructs the pieces into a 3D model. The digital images allow researchers to examine a diseased or injured brain holistically, compared with traditional methods that involve sampling affected areas. However, the goal of the project isn't just to study abnormalities: Annese plans to create a library of hundreds of brains to compare individual differences and hopefully gain some insight into human nature.

Annese's work is featured in the exhibition Brains: The mind as matter at the Wellcome Collection in London.

If you enjoyed this post, watch complex waves of activity observed in a brain for the first time or see some brain scans converted to music.

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