The future of human cerebral cartography: a novel approach

Abstract

Cerebral cartography can be understood in a limited, static, neuroanatomical sense. Temporal information from electrical recordings contributes information on regional interactions adding a functional dimension. Selective tagging and imaging of molecules adds biochemical contributions. Cartographic detail can also be correlated with normal or abnormal psychological or behavioural data. Modern cerebral cartography is assimilating all these elements. Cartographers continue to collect ever more precise data in the hope that general principles of organization will emerge. However, even detailed cartographic data cannot generate knowledge without a multi-scale framework making it possible to relate individual observations and discoveries. We propose that, in the next quarter century, advances in cartography will result in progressively more accurate drafts of a data-led, multi-scale model of human brain structure and function. These blueprints will result from analysis of large volumes of neuroscientific and clinical data, by a process of reconstruction, modelling and simulation. This strategy will capitalize on remarkable recent developments in informatics and computer science and on the existence of much existing, addressable data and prior, though fragmented, knowledge. The models will instantiate principles that govern how the brain is organized at different levels and how different spatio-temporal scales relate to each other in an organ-centred context.

Imaging-based parcellations of the human brain

“…According to the means of their time, all these cartographers transcribed their observations by manually drawing 2D maps of brain regions on paper. Importantly, these first maps were highly observer-dependent and based on subjective classification criteria, and therefore suffer from reproducibility issues 121 . This motivated the subsequent development of observer-independent techniques based on computerized image analysis 122 using a border-detection approach 47,77 .…”

Cell Calcium Imaging as a Reliable Method to Study Neuron–Glial Circuits

“…Cellular networks can now be visualized with powerful imaging methods using advanced statistics to allow dynamic molecular messages that drive structure and function with fluorescent shuffled reporters ( Lichtman et al, 2008 ). Pharmacological approaches based on functional proteomics add several layers of complexity, evaluated through optogenetics ( Kim et al, 2017 ) or in combination with electrical or optical recordings, providing powerful strategies to alter the neural function and gain behavioral data ( Frackowiak and Markram, 2015 ). This will soon lead to further details on the plasticity and the adaptation of the brain to understand still intangible fields such as cognition and consciousness ( Cook, 2008 ).…”

Connectivity‐based parcellation: Critique and implications

“…Put differently, most neuroscientific methods associating behavior with aspects of neurobiology are na€ ıve to underlying neurobiological compartments. While observing mappings between behavior and the brain, these methods are not well suited to establish or question the architecture of the brain itself [Frackowiak and Markram, 2015]. That is, rather than providing a map of the brain, they provide a map of a particular functional or structural feature (such as recruitment by a particular task or aberrations in a particular group of patients) in brain space.…”

“…Even more so, an informed and confident decision on the most pertinent ROI segregation should be justified by consistency across different clustering algorithms and cluster validity criteria [Clos et al, 2013]. More generally, the neurobiological "ground truth," unknown to us neuroscientists, is probably hierarchical, modular, and multi-scale [Frackowiak and Markram, 2015].…”