A team of neuroscientists from the University of Washington in St. Louis (USA) together with other American centers, have created a new map – very precise – of 180 areas of the cerebral cortex, of which 97 of them were unknown until now . This finding has been published in the journal Nature and will help both in the investigation of human cognitive evolution and in surgeries related to our thinking organ.
The researchers, immersed in the Human Connectome Project , used software that has integrated data from many types of magnetic resonance images and that automatically detects the “fingerprint” of each of the brain areas in the brain scans of each individual. Thus, the 83 previously known areas have been confirmed and 97 new areas of the cerebral cortex have been incorporated.
“These new knowledge and tools may help explain how our cerebral cortex evolved and the functions of its specialized areas in health and disease. They could also be applied to achieve unprecedented precision in brain surgery and other clinical interventions, ”the study authors explain.
It is a big step in the field of neuroscience since most of the existing maps are limited by a single measurement ; that is, they were only capable of developing a map of microstructural architecture or brain connectivity, for example, but not both at the same time.
Thus, the new map has been refined thanks to the use of multiple types of magnetic resonance images of 210 participants, to measure the cortical architecture, activity, connectivity and topography of the cortex. Despite the difference between individuals, neuroscientists have been able to accurately identify all regions in the new volunteers.
