Towards an all-encompassing brain atlas

The journal Brain Structure and Function is in the process of publishing a new Special Issue entitled “Towards multi-modal, multi-species brain atlases”, with an editorial by Rogier B. Mars (University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences) and Nicola Palomero-Gallagher (Research Centre Jülich’s Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine). Some of the most notable entries in this special issue include a triad of articles on the primate thalamus (García-Cabezas et al., 2023; He et al., 2022; Pérez-Santos et al., 2023), a subcortical complex of differing structure, connectivity, function and developmental origin; or a visual demonstration of how Sanides’ (1962, 1970) Hypothesis on the Dual Origin of the Neocortex explains the preservation of cortical types across the brains of rodents and primates, despite the latter order’s neocortical expansion (García-Cabezas et al., 2022).

Neuroanatomical knowledge improves the interpretation of findings in neuroimaging analysis in the context of the brain’s underlying structural and functional segregation. This has never been more patent than now, in this new digital, open neuroscience era. One of this era’s greatest ensuing advancements is the continuous creation of brain maps, obtained using a plethora of different methods. Most interesting is the number of organization levels of these maps, which do not necessarily present the same degree of granularity, within and between species. Understanding how the different maps relate to one another in these two directions, coined vertical and horizontal translation, respectively, are equally ambitious endeavors. Finally, the editorial leaves us with a quote by Passingham and Lau (2022) for us to look forward to the full publication of the issue: “… the aim of neuroscience is not to simply label the brain, but to understand how it works.”

Many of these topics on neuroanatomy and brain functions will be precisely discussed next week in the Cortical Evolution congress in Burgos, Spain.

Tim Schuurman