Impact
How the Julich Brain Atlas contributes to advancing neuroscience, medicine and technology
The Julich Brain Atlas has become a modern-day reference of the brain for the neuroimaging community. Its impact also includes brain medicine. For example, clinical researchers have been using the high-precision data of the BigBrain to optimise surgery for the treatment of epilepsy. It has also contributed to advances in supercomputing and AI not least because the analysis of entire brains at cellular resolution produces massive amounts of data and poses new challenges to high-performance computing.
A new standard in neuroimaging
The Julich Brain Atlas is emerging as a new microstructural standard resource in neuroimaging, highlighted by its adoption as the default atlas in AFNI, a widely used open-source tool for analysing and visualizing functional MRI data. The atlas is also part of FreeSurfer, the software of choice for the Human Connectome Project. As the core of the EBRAINS Human Brain Atlas, it serves as a central framework integrating diverse brain data across scales.
Improving epilepsy surgery with digital brain models
In millions of epilepsy patients, pharmacological treatment is not effective and surgical intervention is the only treatment option. Within the Human Brain Project (HBP), scientists from France have developed personalised brain models (‘The Virtual Brain’) to identify the areas where seizures emerge in a patient’s brain. With the help of the Julich Brain Atlas the accuracy of the brain models is being improved. The EPINOV clinical trial marks a major step in translating research from the Virtual Brain Twin project into clinical application for the treatment of epilepsy in drug-resistant patients.
© Bludau et al. Brain Struct Funct 223, 2335–2342 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-018-1620-6
Linking cytoarchitecture to gene expression
We have developed the JuGEx tool to allow integrating information on brain architecture from the Julich Brain Atlas with gene expression data from the Allen Human Brain Atlas. The tool enables detailed insights into how areas with specific gene activities and microanatomical architectures contribute to brain function and dysfunction. Using JuGEx, we found differences in the expression of several candidate genes for major depressive disorder in a disease-affected part of the brain. In this way, the Julich Brain Atlas helps researchers to better understand disease.
Correlating microstructure and function
The Julich Brain Atlas enables researchers to directly relate microstructural segregation of brain areas to functional imaging data. A recent example is a study where scientist remapped the human premotor cortex, identifying seven clearly distinguishable subareas. The new histologically high-resolution maps show how the different regions are anatomically delineated. This new subdivision helps clarify the functional differences between these regions.
Explaining individual differences during aging
The Julich Brain Atlas also helps to explain variability of cognitive, lifestyle and neurodegeneration profiles between different individuals. Such phenotype data can be integrated with regional genetic, molecular and connectional data using the Julich Brain Atlas via the EBRAINS infrastructure to explain individual differences in neurodegeneration.
Application in deep brain stimulation (DBS)
The Julich Brain Atlas is used in deep brain stimulation (DBS) studies to analyse the precise localization of implanted electrodes (Minnerop et al.). The atlas allows researchers to map stimulation sites onto high-resolution, probabilistic brain images and relate their exact position to clinical outcomes. This provides critical insights that may support the refinement of future therapeutic strategies. Combining DBS with atlas-based connectivity analyses shows how modulating distinct brain circuits leads to symptom improvement, helping to identify the networks underlying different neurological and psychiatric disorders (Hollunder et al.).