Scientists generate 3D model of the brainRSS Feed

Scientists are able to examine the brain like never before after developing new technology which allows them to generate a three-dimensional version of the brain.

This new model, which could benefit those with brain injury, has found that the brain contains some 200 billion nerve cells, connected by hundreds of trillions of synapses.

The new technology, developed by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, found that it takes tens of thousands of synapses to connect one neuron to another and there are approximately 125 trillion synapses in the cerebral cortex alone.

Combining a new imaging model called array tomography with state-of-the-art computer software, the researchers were able to stitch together images to create the three-dimensional model, which can be rotated, navigated and penetrated by researchers.

Stephen Smith, senior author of a paper on the study which has been published in journal Neuron, said that researchers generated the images from a slab of tissue from the brain of a mouse.

"I anticipate that within a few years, array tomography will have become an important mainline clinical pathology technique, and a drug-research tool," he added.

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Posted by Timothy Walters
 

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