Scientists reveal the most detailed map of the adult human brain, revealing the arrangement and function of 3,300 types of brain cells.
Purkinje cells, large nerve cells in the cerebellum, are located at the back and bottom of the brain. Photo: Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library
The new study of human brain cell atlases was published on October 12 in 21 papers published in three journals: Science, Science Advances and Science Translational Medicine . "It's not just an atlas, it's really opening up a whole new field where you can look at the brains of animals at extremely high cellular resolution, which was not possible before," said Ed Lein, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and lead author of five of the papers.
The new research comes as part of a major project by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which began in 2017 and aims to catalogue the brain cells of mice, humans, and non-human primates.
The cells mapped included neurons—brain cells that communicate through electrical and chemical messages—and roughly the same number of other cells. The adult human brain contains about 86 billion neurons, plus or minus 8 billion, and about 84 billion other cells.
The team used a technique called transcriptomics to catalog all the RNA in each cell. RNA is a genetic molecule that carries instructions for making proteins and doing other important jobs. They also used epigenetics to examine the chemical signals that sit on top of DNA and control how genes are used. The individual studies included in the project included data from hundreds of thousands to millions of brain cells.
Combining these techniques, the team created cell maps of the developing and adult human brain, as well as the brains of several other primate groups, such as marmosets ( Callithrix ) and macaques ( Macaca ). They were then able to directly compare human and primate brains, revealing that many of the cell types in the human brain are also present in chimpanzees and gorillas. But despite the common cell types, the gene activity of these cells is very different in humans and primates, leading to differences in how the cells coordinate.
Although unprecedented in detail, the human brain map is just the team’s first draft. Next, they want to decipher the functions of the newly discovered brain cells, a large number of which are located deep in the brain, in structures like the brain stem. They also want to understand how the genetic activity of different cells contributes to the development of neurological diseases.
Thu Thao (According to Live Science )
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