Posted on 07/20/2016 2:22:10 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The new study identified – with a nearly 97 percent detection rate – 97 new cortex areas per hemisphere, in addition to confirming 83 that were previously known.
NIMH grantees David Van Essen, Ph.D., (link is external) and Matthew Glasser (link is external), Ph.D., of Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues at six other researcher centers, report on their discoveries July 20, 2016 in the journal Nature.
Earlier studies of cortex organization often used just one measure, such as examining postmortem tissue with a microscope. Uncertain delineation of cortex areas has sometimes led to shaky comparability of brain imaging findings.
“The situation is analogous to astronomy where ground-based telescopes produced relatively blurry images of the sky before the advent of adaptive optics and space telescopes,” noted Glasser, lead author of the study.
The HCP team set out to banish this blurriness by using multiple, precisely aligned, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) modalities to measure cortical architecture, activity, connectivity, and topography in a group of 210 healthy participants. These measures – including cortex thickness, cortex myelin content, task and resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) – cross-validated each other. The findings were, in turn, confirmed in an additional independent sample of 210 healthy participants.
Even though some cortex areas turned out to be atypically located in a small minority of subjects, the data-derived algorithms incorporated into the software were able to successfully map them. While the study included fMRI scans of subjects performing tasks, the researchers determined that resting-state MRI techniques should suffice to map the areas in future studies using the tools they developed. Some areas may turn out to have further subdivisions or be subunits of other areas, in light of new data, noted senior author Van Essen.
(Excerpt) Read more at nih.gov ...
Good, I knew I was short brain regions. I hope they find more.
I have and use them all. They only need ‘tickle’ the correct region with the proper Turing-like query.
Sounds like they’re quite a while away from treating brain injuries, especially older ones.
More in the discovery phase.
I wish it would speed up for the soldiers with head injurie.
Brain injuries continue a cascade of damage to the brain for 20 years at least, at last count. Testing has confirmed this.
Quantem computers should help speed up treatments, I guess.
I know everything, I just can’t remember it all!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.