UCLA Launches Brain Mapping Project
Researchers are now trying to better understand what constitutes a "normal" brain by studying a newly compiled atlas that contains digitally mapped images of 7,000 of the organs. [...] Use of the atlas allows researchers to compare and contrast these brain images, captured from all sorts of people living in seven nations on four continents. Most are between the ages of 20 and 40, but some are as young as 7 and as old as 90. [...]
"This is a project born of frustration, basically. For many years, all of us who study brain structure and function have struggled with the fact that no two brains are the same -- not in shape or size and certainly not in function," said Dr. John Mazziotta of the International Consortium for Brain Mapping, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. "But how different they were and how to compare them was not known."
