$30 Million Project Initiated to Map the Brain's Wiring

An extraordinary five-year, US$30-million effort to generate a first-of-its-kind map of all the major circuits in the human brain is being initiated by U.S. radiologists.

Thirty-three researchers at nine institutions, led by radiologist from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (MO, USA) and the University of Minnesota's Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR; Minneapolis, USA), will contribute to the Human Connectome Project. Using powerful, custom-built brain scanners, a supercomputer, new brain analysis techniques, and other cutting edge resources, they will trace the anatomic "wires” that interconnect thousands of different regions of the human brain's gray matter. A second Human Connectome Project grant for $8.5 million has been awarded to a consortium led by investigators at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA; USA) to develop a new brain scanner with improved sensitivity and spatial resolution.

"This effort will have a major impact on our understanding of the healthy adult human brain,” remarked lead investigator David Van Essen, Ph.D., a professor, and head of the department of anatomy and neurobiology at Washington University. "It will also enable future projects that probe what changes in brain circuits underlie a broad variety of disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia.”

The project is funded by 16 components of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (Betheda, MD, USA) via its Blueprint for Neuroscience Research. "In the last two decades, scientists have developed a fantastic number of tools for noninvasive study of the human brain,” stated lead investigator Kamil Ugurbil, Ph.D., director of the CMRR and a professor of radiology, neurosciences, and medicine at the University of Minnesota. "The Connectome Project will significantly advance these techniques, many of which are based on magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], and apply them to generate unprecedented insights into the connectivity and function of the brain.”

"On a scale never before attempted, this highly coordinated effort will use state-of-the-art imaging instruments, analysis tools and informatics technologies and all of the resulting data will be freely shared with the research community,” said Dr. Michael Huerta of the National Institute of Mental Health, who directs the NIH Connectome initiative. "Individual variability in brain connections underlies the diversity of our thinking, perception, and motor skills, so understanding these networks promises advances in brain health.”

Brain scans of volunteer subjects for the Connectome Project will be carried out at Washington University, the University of Minnesota, and Saint Louis University. Scientists will use instrumentation and methods developed at the CMRR with the participation of researchers at Advanced MRI Technologies (Sebastopol, CA, USA).

The Human Connectome Project's goal is to provide an unparalleled compilation of neural data, an interface to navigate graphically these data, and the chance to achieve never before realized conclusions about the living human brain.

Related Links:
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
University of Minnesota's Center for Magnetic Resonance Research
Human Connectome Project