Scientists Create Highly Detailed 3D Reconstruction of a Human Brain

An exhaustive map of the human brain has been a long-sought goal of neuroanatomists. Noninvasive imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allow scientists to investigate the healthy living human brain, but provide only limited anatomical detail. A higher level of detail can be obtained by using microscopy on brains from deceased donors, generally focusing on small brain structures imaged in 2D. Now a team led by scientists from the University of Amsterdam (UvA), have combined MRI and microscopy to produce 3D images of two entire brains with a previously unmatched level of detail. Their findings were published on April 27, 2022 in Science Advances. The open-access article is titled “A Unified 3D Map of Microscopic Architecture and MRI of the Human Brain.”