{"id":31780,"date":"2021-10-06T00:00:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T07:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vermont.salk.edu\/?post_type=disclosure&p=31780"},"modified":"2024-01-30T14:30:43","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T22:30:43","slug":"salk-teams-advance-efforts-to-treat-prevent-and-cure-brain-disorders-via-nih-brain-atlas","status":"publish","type":"disclosure","link":"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/zh\/news-release\/salk-teams-advance-efforts-to-treat-prevent-and-cure-brain-disorders-via-nih-brain-atlas\/","title":{"rendered":"Salk teams advance efforts to treat, prevent and cure brain disorders, via NIH brain atlas"},"content":{"rendered":"

LA JOLLA\u2014It takes billions of cells to make a human brain, and scientists have long struggled to map this complex network of neurons. Now, dozens of research teams around the country, led in part by Salk scientists, have made inroads into creating an atlas of the mouse brain as a first step toward a human brain atlas.<\/p>\n

The researchers, collaborating as part of the National Institute of Health\u2019s BRAIN Initiative<\/a> Cell Census Network (BICCN<\/a>), report the new data today in a special issue of the journal Nature<\/em>. The results describe how different cell types are organized and connected throughout the mouse brain.<\/p>\n

\"A
A representation of cell diversity in the brain. Individual nuclei are colored in the bright hues of t-SNE plots used in epigenomics analysis to distinguish individual brain cell types. Layers of background color suggest extrinsic factors that influence cell function.
Click here<\/a> for a high-resolution image.
Credit: Michael Nunn, Salk Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOur first goal is to use the mouse brain as a model to really understand the diversity of cells in the brain and how they\u2019re regulated,\u201d says Salk Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator\u00a0\u7ea6\u745f\u592b\u00b7\u57c3\u514b\u5c14<\/a>, co-director of the BICCN. \u201cOnce we\u2019ve established tools to do this, we can move to working on primate and human brains.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies\u00ae (BRAIN) Initiative is \u201ca large-scale effort that seeks to deepen understanding of the inner workings of the human mind and to improve how we treat, prevent and cure disorders of the brain.\u201d Since its initial funding in 2014, the BRAIN Initiative has awarded more than $1.8 billion in research awards.<\/p>\n

The BICCN, one subset of the BRAIN Initiative, specifically focuses on creating brain atlases that describe the full plethora of cells\u2014as characterized by many different techniques\u2014in mammalian brains. Salk is one of three institutions that were given U19 awards to act as central players in generating data for the BICCN.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not just a phone book for the brain,\u201d says Margarita Behrens<\/a>, a Salk associate research professor who helped lead the new BICCN papers. \u201cIn the long run, to treat brain diseases, we need to be able to hone in on exactly which cell types are having trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

The special issue of Nature<\/em> has 17 total BICCN articles, including five co-authored by Salk researchers that describe approaches to studying brain cells and new characterizations of subtypes of brain cells in mice. Some highlights include:<\/p>\n