A Four-Dimensional Probabilistic Atlas of the Human Brain
- John Mazziotta,
- Arthur Toga,
- Alan Evans,
- Peter Fox,
- Jack Lancaster,
- Karl Zilles,
- Roger Woods,
- Tomas Paus,
- Gregory Simpson,
- Bruce Pike,
- Colin Holmes,
- Louis Collins,
- Paul Thompson,
- David MacDonald,
- Marco Iacoboni,
- Thorsten Schormann,
- Katrin Amunts,
- Nicola Palomero-Gallagher,
- Stefan Geyer,
- Larry Parsons,
- Katherine Narr,
- Noor Kabani,
- Georges Le Goualher,
- Jordan Feidler,
- Kenneth Smith,
- Dorret Boomsma,
- Hilleke Hulshoff Pol,
- Tyrone Cannon,
- Ryuta Kawashima,
- Bernard Mazoyer
- Affiliations of the authors: UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California (JM, AT, RW, CH, PT, MI, KN); McGill University, Montreal, Canada (AE, TP, BP, LC, DM, NK, GleG); University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas (PF, JL, LP); Heinrich Heine University, Dusseldorf, Germany (KZ, TS, SG); University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, California (GS); Institute of Medicine, Research Center Julich, Germany (KA, NP-G); The MITRE Corporation, McLean, Virginia (JF, KS); Vrije University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (DB); University Medical Center, Utrecht, The Netherlands (HHP); Department of Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles (TC); Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan (RK); University de Caen, Caen, France (BM)
- Correspondence and reprints: John C. Mazziotta, MD, PhD, Director, Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, Pierson-Lovelace Investigator, Professor of Neurology, Radiological Sciences and Medical and Molecular Pharmacology, 660 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095; e-mail: <mazz{at}loni.ucla.edu>
- Received 19 January 2001
- Accepted 1 May 2001
Classic atlases of the human brain or the brain of other species have each been derived from a single brain or brains from a very small number of subjects and have employed simple scaling factors to stretch or constrict a given subject's brain to match the atlas. The result has been a rigid and often inflexible system that disregards useful information about morphometric (i.e., dimensionality) and densitometric (i.e., intensity) variability among subjects. This article reviews the rationale for and development of a probabilistic atlas and reference system of the human brain derived from a large population of subjects, representative of the entire species, with retention of information about variability.
The nervous system is unique among human body systems in its spatial and temporal organization. The central nervous system is divided into highly specialized regions that have unique properties in terms of molecules, cell types, connections, and functional systems. The functions of these units vary with time, spanning the gamut from the millennia of evolution to the millisecond choreography of neurophysiologic events. This temporal and spatial specialization is well suited to the application of informatics techniques. In fact, such methods will be required as the basis for beginning to understand and organize the ever-increasing amount of neuroscientific information that is accumulating about this, the most complicated system known. What is ultimately required is a multidimensional database organized with three dimensions in space and one in time along with a seemingly infinite number of attributes referable to these four physical dimensions.
Like geography, neuroscience requires accepted maps, terminologies, coordinate systems, and reference spaces to allow accurate and effective communication within the field and with allied discips. Geographic atlases of the earth have advantages over anatomic atlases. Earth atlases can assume a relatively constant physical reality over thousands of years. On that single, …
