Essay 3.2 The Whole Brain Atlas

The human brain has been called the most complicated structure in the known universe. You’ve learned a bit about how the brain works in this chapter; now do you want to see what the brain looks like?

There are a number of websites that allow you to explore the brain’s anatomy, but the best one may be the Whole Brain Atlas (WBA) by K. A. Johnson of Harvard Medical School and J. A. Becker of MIT. The WBA provides labeled pictures of “slices” of actual human brains taken using several neuroimaging techniques, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), and positron emission tomography (PET). In addition to a complete atlas of structures in “normal” brains, the WBA includes pictures of brains with various neurological disorders, including stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and multiple sclerosis. You’re probably not going to be diagnosing any of these disorders or searching for the parahippocampal temporal gyrus any time soon, but it’s still pretty cool to get a sense of what’s inside your head.

Links

• Go to the Whole Brain Atlas home page.
• The striate cortex is located near the area of the occipital lobe labeled “cuneus” on this image.
• Images of a brain that just underwent a stroke
• Tour of the brain of a patient with Alzheimer’s disease