Narrator: This is Science Today. No two human brains are alike, so when scientists are looking at the brain, how do they know if what they’re looking at is normal? It’s a question that researchers who study brain function and structure have struggled with for many years. That’s why neurology professor Arthur Toga co-conceived UCLA’s newly compiled Brain Atlas Project. It’s basically a database filled with seven thousand digitally mapped images of the brain.

Toga: Because it’s computational, we can render exquisite visualizations or three-dimensional models that can be interacted with and spun around and colored in different ways and shown to illustrate how one structure relates to another structure. So for a teaching tool, it’s a remarkable advance.

Narrator: This reference system for the human brain is available on the web for scientists to use.

Toga: The electronic way that this project is being conducted provides for seamless cooperation between scientists at different sites, all around the country, all around the world.

Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.