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Researchers from the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1) and the Cécile and Oskar Vogt Institute for Brain Research have 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. The new maps are available in the Julich Brain Atlas, a core component of EBRAINS—the European digital research platform for neuroscience. The study has now been published in Communications Biology.

An international team of researchers has successfully applied the recently developed imaging technique ComSLI (Computational Scattered Light Imaging) to brain sections prepared using a wide range of methods, enabling the visualization of the brain’s complex fiber network with micrometer precision. This achievement marks an important advance that opens new possibilities for neuroscience and biomedical research—such as renewed, in-depth analyses of existing tissue sections. Their findings have now been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

The Jülich Brain Atlas is now the new standard atlas in AFNI, a widely used open-source tool for analyzing and visualizing functional MRI data. The atlas is an important resource for the neuroimaging community and provides detailed parcellations of brain regions based on microstructure.

Researchers have conducted a detailed study and re-mapping of the so-called premotor cortex in the brain, which controls movements and cognitive processes. The new maps have enabled the precise localization of the anatomical correlates of the so-called eye fields for the first time. 

A research team has used the Julich-Brain Atlas to uncover neuroanatomical correlates of antisocial behaviour.

In a new study in Nature Communications, scientists from Canada, Great Britain and Germany have used the Julich Brain Atlas and high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging to study patterns of organization across the whole brain and on the microstructure. The atlas is an open and interactive ressource available to neuroscientists on the digital EBRAINS research infrastructure. The results highlight an interplay between local brain areas with distinct structural and functional profiles, and global patterns which span the whole brain as cortical gradients.

The brain’s default mode network is a group of regions that become active when we are not engaged with our surroundings – for instance, when daydreaming. Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany have now investigated the structure and function of this network by analysing brain tissue and applying advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques.

Using the BigBrain, which is available on the EBRAINS research infrastructure, the study revealed microstructural differences that influence how the default mode network communicates with other regions of the brain. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. 

In people who were born deaf, it had long been observed that brain areas normally involved in hearing become activated in other tasks. However, the precise nature of this reorganisation is not yet well understood. In a new study published in Nature Communications, a research team from Poland, Ireland and the US have found that areas of the auditory cortex take on a new role in processing visual meaning. The brain scanning study relied on fine structural parcellations of the auditory cortex available in the Julich Brain Atlas to define the regions of interest. Functional imaging measurements were made while participants watched silent animated films in an MRI brain scanner. The subsequent structure-function analysis was supported by the atlas-toolbox siibra. The Julich Brain Atlas and siibra are both openly available on the European Research Infrastructure EBRAINS. www.ebrains.eu

Do our brains process natural and deepfaked voices differently? In a new study published in Communications Biology, scientists from Switzerland and Australia have shown that this is the case. Neuroimaging experiments identified two brain regions that respond differently to natural and deepfake voices. The results add to our understanding of neural mechanisms behind our ability to recognise deceptive information in digital environments. To precisely characterise the brain network, the researchers used probabilistic maps from the openly accessible Julich Brain Atlas on EBRAINS.