Scientists use NeuroInfo to help navigate the brain and compare findings across labs
Reproducibility has always been a primary goal in science. But the human effort involved in replicating a research study and analyzing the results, can be considerable. NeuroInfo® is a revolutionary new tool that scientists are using to register whole slide images into a standardized mouse brain atlas in an easy, automated way. Images and subsequent measurements can then be cross-referenced against findings from a myriad of other studies.
Coronal mouse brain section from the Laboratory of Systems Neuroscience of Dr. Charles Gerfen, NIMH Bethesda, Maryland
Meeting the demands of users is always a priority for MBF Bioscience, and working with customers like Dr. Charles Gerfen of the National Institute of Mental Health provided a major impetus for developing NeuroInfo into such a revolutionary product.
“The major advance,” said Dr. Gerfen, “is that we’re able to analyze projections from within and between different areas of the cerebral cortex to determine organizational principles of the cerebral cortex,” Along with Dr. Bryan M. Hooks of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Dr. Gerfen uses NeuroInfo to trace pyramidal neuron projections in Cre-driver mice (Hooks, et al 2018).
As outlined in a study published in Nature Communications, the research team first used MBF Bioscience’s BrainMaker functionality of NeuroInfo to reconstruct four Cre-recombinase driver mouse brains with sections imaged with Neurolucida. They then registered the reconstructed brains into the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas and then collectively visualized experimental data overlain with the atlas to determine exactly how the four populations of cortical pyramidal neurons they were tracking fit within the greater structure of the brain. “Essentially every pixel or image in our original images could be assigned to one of the 2500 brain structures in the Allen Atlas, said Dr. Gerfen.
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