(July 2, 2012) A
collaborative project at UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging looks at how the
brain integrates neural information to help scientists better understand brain
diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, autism and multiple sclerosis.
The Human
Connectome Project, which was established in 2009, is the first of its kind in
the field of connectomics, which is the study of interactions between different
parts of the nervous system, said Arthur Toga, director of the UCLA Laboratory
of Neuro Imaging who is one of the principal investigators.
The project is a collaboration
with Massachusetts General Hospital. Massachusetts General Hospital conducts
brain scans on healthy patients and sends the results to UCLA, where
researchers like Jack Van Horn, a UCLA neurologist, apply complex algorithms to
the raw brain scan data so they can generate the maps in a healthy patient’s
brain.