Allen Human Brain Atlas Launched
While we're on the subject of the importance of the brain to engineered longevity, here is news of an infrastructural advance from EurekAlert!: "The Allen Institute for Brain Science announced today that it has launched the Allen Human Brain Atlas, a publicly available online atlas charting genes at work throughout the human brain. The data provided in this initial data release represent the most extensive and detailed body of information about gene activity in the human brain to date, documenting which genes are expressed, or 'turned on' where. In the coming years, the Atlas will be expanded with more data and more sophisticated search, analysis and visualization tools to create a comprehensive resource useful to an increasingly wide range of scientists and research programs worldwide. The Allen Human Brain Atlas, available at www.brain-map.org, is a unique multi-modal atlas of the human brain that integrates anatomic and genomic information to create a searchable, three-dimensional map of gene activity in the brain. Data modalities in this resource include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and histology - providing information about gross neuroanatomy, pathways of neural connections, and microscopic anatomy, respectively - as well as gene expression data derived from multiple approaches."
Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/aifb-aif052410.php