Head Scratching

“Get those synapses firing”, “test your grey matter” – the idioms may be tired, but understanding what’s going on inside our noggins is full of fresh challenges. While scientists often use MRI to trace out brain structures, and microscopy to zoom in on its cells – here they bring everything together. Shaving thin slices off a human brain, they use microscopy to highlight blood vessels in each slice (in red). Next, through careful comparison with MRI scans, they pull the images back together like a sliced loaf in a bag, reassembling the brain as a virtual 3D model. The result is a ‘mesoscopic’ view – highly-detailed but also zoomed out far enough to take in the entire vasculature. The team presents this model, and others looking at different brain tissues, as public resource – helping scientists old and new appreciate the brain from fresh perspectives, towards solving future mysteries in neurodegenerative disease.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Anneke Alkemade and Pierre-Louis Bazin, and colleagues
• Integrative Model-Based Neuroscience Research Unit, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Science Advances, April 2022