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Thursday, 5 April 2012

The brain is wired in a 3D grid structure, landmark study finds

The brain appears to be wired in a rectangular 3D grid structure, suggests a new brain imaging study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

"Far from being just a tangle of wires, the brain's white-matter connections turn out to be more like ribbon cables - folding 2D sheets of parallel neuronal fibers that cross paths at right angles, like the warp and weft of a fabric," explained Van Wedeen, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and the Harvard Medical School.

"This grid structure is continuous and consistent at all scales and across humans and other primate species."

"Getting a high resolution wiring diagram of our brains is a landmark in human neuroanatomy," said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. "This new technology may reveal individual differences in brain connections that could aid diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders."...read more>>>...