The conclusion belongs to a new scientific investigation

Mar 30, 2012 11:33 GMT  ·  By
Details of thew new study appear in the March 30 issue of the top journal Science
   Details of thew new study appear in the March 30 issue of the top journal Science

In past studies, scientists concluded that the human brain exhibited a seemingly-random architecture, with neural connections intertwined in very complex patterns. A new research has recently revealed that this understanding is false, and that the brain is in fact more ordered than first established.

Experts previously compared the arrangement of the human brain to a bowl of noodles, whereas now they are beginning to see it more as a uniformed, grid-like pattern. The new investigation was carried out with the support of the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

Details of the study appear in a paper entitled “The Geometric Structure of the Brain Fiber Pathways: A Continuous Orthogonal Grid,” which is published in the March 30 issue of the top journal Science.

The work was led by experts at the Harvard University, the MIT Division of Health Sciences Technology, Boston University, University Hospital Center & University of Lausanne in Switzerland, the Vanderbilt University and the National Taiwan University College of Medicine.

Together, the investigators used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners to analyze the 3D scaffolding of the human brain for the first time ever. They observed a grid-like structure in the tissue through which neural pathways pass.

“By looking at how the pathways fit in the brain, we anticipated the connectivity to resemble that of a bowl of spaghetti, a very narrow and discreet object,” researcher Van J. Wedeen explains.

He holds an appointment as an associate professor of radiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard Medical School and the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging.

“We discovered that the pathways in the top of the brain are all organized like woven sheets with the fibers running in two directions in the sheets and in a third direction perpendicular to the sheets,” he adds.

“These sheets all stack together so that the entire connectivity of the brain follows three precisely defined directions,” Wedeen adds, explaining that these pathways are easier to track during embryological life. As people age, their brains become more folded, making pathway tracking difficult.

Members of the research group now plan to conduct additional studies based on the research. They say that these investigations could reveal more about the connectivity and pathways of the human brain.