- LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A
computerized "atlas" of the brain is for the first time giving
researchers and medical experts a map for unlocking the puzzles of the
mind.
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- The 10-year project "was born out of frustration,"
said Dr. John Mazziotta, chair of the department of neurology at the University
of California, Los Angeles, medical school. "Unfortunately, the brain
is different in every single person. There is a tremendous amount of variance."
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- As a result, researchers and radiologists have essentially
relied on their own experience to measure brain activity or diagnose disease.
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- But the atlas, which the researchers recently started
making available for use, will allow specialists to compare a patient's
brain with those in the data base. This may enable them to detect crucial
differences in the brains of sick people and thus diagnose and treat them.
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- An international research consortium, led by Mazziotta
and Dr. Arthur Toga, director of UCLA's laboratory of neuro imaging, has
so far gathered digital images of 7,000 brains using technology such as
magnetic resonance imaging scans. The scans taken of the brains of people
mainly between the ages of 20 and 40 are colorized, animated and otherwise
enhanced.
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- The participants included healthy people as well as individuals
suffering from Alzheimer's, autism, schizophrenia and fetal alcohol syndrome.
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- "What scientists do is take things apart and study
one little thing at a time ... This atlas allows us to put it all together
again," said Toga, who calls the brain "the last great frontier
of human biology."
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- The atlas, available on-line at http://www.loni.ucla.edu/ICBM,
enables brain experts worldwide to access four-dimensional details -- time
as well as the three dimensions of space -- of brain structure and function,
descriptions of how the brain changes as we age and how and where neurological
disease occurs.
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- The project is funded by a number of sources including
the National Institutes of Health.
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- MORE CONFIDENCE IN DIAGNOSIS
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- "Eventually, it will be used to compare against
disease populations. It will give clinicians more confidence in a diagnosis,"
Toga said.
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- The project is comprised of high-definition structural
maps of individual brains based on age, race, gender, educational background,
genetic composition and other distinguishing characteristics. Layered over
the anatomical maps are animations of brain functions such as memory, emotion,
language and speech. Users can look at individual brain pictures, composite
pictures of subgroups by, for example, age or gender or as a composite
of all 7,000 participants.
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- Toga has overseen brain scans of hundreds of people who
tested within a typical range on measures such as blood pressure and pulse.
Scans were taken while the subjects were at rest and while they performed
a series of tasks, from focusing on a picture of a checkerboard to responding
to sounds, to capture how the brain responds to stimuli.
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- "The brain handles the challenge of thinking of
and initiating a word, and of understanding that word, differently. Execution
of these tasks involves complex circuitry throughout the brain," said
Mazziotta.
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- These differences between brains make it difficult to
know what is normal and what is not. The atlas is also expected to be a
guide for brain surgeons, who may not be able to actually view the critical
areas in a patient's brain.
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- The atlas project is promising, but it is too early to
say how relevant it will be as a medical tool, said Dr. Mony De Leon, director
of the New York University Center for Brain Health who is not connected
with the atlas project.
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- "It could be used as an indicator to tell you whether
part of the brain is outside of normal limits, but someone still has to
interpret the results," he said.
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- "If a pattern can be reliably determined, it will
be an advantage in compiling evidence to demonstrate clinical relevance,"
De Leon said.
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- The project "will probably never end," said
Toga. "The point is to continue to refine and continue to add data."
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- The consortium is in the process of expanding the data
base to include younger and older age groups as well as brain scans from
people with various neurological diseases.
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