3D Color Images Of The Brain Reveal Its Glorious Unseen Detail
Kasthuri et al./Cell 2015 A 3D reconstruction of 13 axons, packed closely together with a single spine originating from a central dendrite. The human brain remains one of the most mysterious organs in the human body. However, an imaging technique developed by a group of researchers including from Harvard, MIT, and Boston University, may bring them one step closer to understanding its intricacies. Their results were published yesterday in the journal, Cell. The approach will allow scientists to see the brain’s beautifully layered 3D structure on the nanoscale with different colors to separate and distinguish cell types. They first created the 3D structure by combining electron microscope (EM) images of the brain structure together. Then, they achieved the color differentiation using VAST, an annotation tool--developed at Harvard by a co-author of this study--that allows users...