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The cerebellum of a mouse is shown here in cross-section. The cerebellum is the brain's locomotion control center. Every time you shoot a basketball, tie your shoe or chop an onion, your cerebellum fires into action. Found at the base of your brain, the cerebellum is a single layer of tissue with deep folds like an accordion. People with damage to this region of the brain often have difficulty with balance, coordination and fine motor skills.
Credit: Thomas Deerinck, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego
Life Magnified: www.nigms.nih.gov/education/life-magnified/Pages/1b1_cere...
Left: This is your brain. Right: This is your brain after intermittent binge drinking.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Studies have demonstrated how just a few sessions of binge drinking during adolescence can knock out neurons (shown in blue arch) in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory core.
But researchers at Duke Medicine have found that binge drinking can also send hippocampal cells called astrocytes (shown in green) awry later in adulthood, potentially impairing the brain’s ability to form new synapses and heal itself from injury.
The study, published November 5 in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, used a rodent model as a surrogate for the adolescent human brain. The researchers exposed the animals to alcohol doses that would result in a blood-alcohol concentration of about .15 in humans.
Researchers didn’t see immediate effects on astrocytes, but once the animals reached adulthood, the cells appeared to go into overdrive.
Image credit: Mary-Louise Risher/Duke Medicine
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
NIH funding from:
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA),
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
The cerebellum is the brain's locomotion control center. Found at the base of your brain, the cerebellum is a single layer of tissue with deep folds like an accordion. People with damage to this region of the brain often have difficulty with balance, coordination and fine motor skills.
This image of a mouse cerebellum is part of a collection of such images in different colors and at different levels of magnification from the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR).
Credit: Tom Deerinck and Mark Ellisman, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR)
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
NIH funding from: National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Multi-color image of whole brain for brain imaging research. This image was created using a computer image processing program (called SUMA), which is used to make sense of data generated by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
For more information, see: fmrif.nimh.nih.gov/course/2015/06_Ziad_20150617
Credit: National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health
Researchers investigate star-shaped brain cells: NIH-funded researchers used 3-D collections of brain tissue grown from human cells to study the brain’s star-shaped astrocytes.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-give-sta...
Credit: Pasca Lab, Stanford University
NIH support from: NINDS, NIMH, NIGMS, NCATS
This High Angular Resolution Diffusion Image (HARDI) of the human brain shows long distance connections, or tracts, grouped on the basis of their anatomical neighborhood. Wiring associated with particular brain structures share the same color. In diffusion imaging, the scanner detects movement of water inside neural fibers to reveal their locations. This image is based on first phase HCP data from the MGH/Harvard/UCLA Connectom scanner. Researchers hope to use the same technique to analyze data from a project related to the HCP’s second phase that will examine connections in teens with mental illness.
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
Credit: Viviana Siless, Ph.D. (www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/user/3579434), Anastasia Yendiki, Ph.D.(www.martinos.org/user/6737) MGH/Harvard,
Boston Adolescent Neuroimaging of Depression and Anxiety (BANDA)
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/human-connectome-pr...
NIH funding from: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Vasculature cells and dopamine-producing neurons of the human brain, both generated from a patient’s stem cells in the Brain-Chip for research on Parkinson’s disease. The Brain-Chip was developed at Cedars-Sinai in collaboration with Emulate, Inc. A top-down view of the brain and vascular channels of a stained Brain-Chip shows brain microcapillary cells (red) interacting with dopamine neurons (white). Here, the Brain-Chip was stained with glucose transport molecule-1 (GLUT1), which is necessary for uptake of glucose from the blood, and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), a key enzyme in dopamine production.
Credit: Cedars-Sinai Photo/Samuel Sances
NIH support from: National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative continues to find new ways to visualize neurons interconnecting into the billions of circuits that control our thoughts, feelings, and movements. This video, another winner in the initiative’s “Show Us Your Brain!” contest, offers an example of how these imaging techniques are getting better all the time.
The video features a millimeter-thick block of fixed tissue from a part of the mouse brain that’s known for its role in controlling voluntary movement. It’s called the globus pallidus externa (GPE). The video takes us inside the 3D landscape of the GPE, zooming in on the many neural cell bodies (yellow) and their arm-like extensions (red) that receive or transmit information. There’s also another class of neural cells called interneurons (blue) that act only within the circuit.
The video comes from the lab of Kwanghun Chung, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in collaboration with Byungkook Lim’s group at the University of California, San Diego, and showcases a technique called SHIELD [1]. Brain tissue is extremely delicate to work with and prone to damage. SHIELD, developed in the Chung lab, offers a new way around this longstanding problem.
Read more on the NIH Director's Blog: directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/08/06/the-amazing-brain-zoomin...
Credit: Chung Lab, MIT
NIH support from: NIMH, NINDS, and NIBIB
Cerebellum (the brain’s locomotion control center) up close
Life Magnified: www.nigms.nih.gov/education/life-magnified/Pages/1b_ncmir...
Credit: Thomas Deerinck, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego
It’s one thing to detect sites in the genome associated with mental disorders; it’s quite another to discover the biological mechanisms by which these changes in DNA work in the human brain to boost risk. In their first concerted effort to tackle the latter, 15 collaborating research teams of the National Institutes of Health-funded PsychENCODE Consortium leveraged statistical power gained from a large sample of about 2000 postmortem human brains.
Read more: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/2000-human-brains-y...
Credit: Vaccarino Lab, Yale University
Research published in: (Amiri et al., Transcriptome and epigenome landscape of human cortical development modeled in organoids. Science 362,2018)
NIH support from: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Illustration of the neurological connections in the brain controlling speech production.
Credit: Stefan Fuertinger and Kristina Simonyan, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
NIH support from: National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders
These are axial MRI scans of a person with multiple sclerosis that have been segmented into various tissue types.
Credit: Ilena George and Daniel Reich, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health
A graphic highlighting the brain's reward circuit.
Credit: National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health
Taken in 2012.
Tracks of the Grand Junction Railroad pass through the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT in Cambridge. They connect tracks coming into Boston from the north with those coming from the west.
Methamphetamine abuse decreases dopamine transporter activity and compromises mental function.
Citation: Volkow ND, Chang L, Wang GJ, Fowler JS, Leonido-Yee M, Franceschi D, Sedler MJ, Gatley SJ, Hitzemann R, Ding YS, Logan J, Wong C, Miller EN. Association of dopamine transporter reduction with psychomotor impairment in methamphetamine abusers. Am J Psychiatry 158(3):377-382, 2001.
Image used by NIDA for the 2007 print publication Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction
Check out the website to see the updated publication, www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-scie...
Credit: National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health
NIH-funded scientists found that our brains may be uniquely sensitive to pitch, the harmonic sounds we hear when listening to speech or music.
The study highlights the promise of Sound Health, a joint project between the NIH and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts, that aims to understand the role of music in health.
Read more: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/our-brains-appear-u...
Credit: NIH
An NIH-funded study of mice provided a detailed diagram of the brain circuits behind thirst and satiety. Supported in part by the NIH's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Technologies (BRAIN) Initiative, the results may also provide a glimpse into the rules that govern how the brain circuits work.
More info: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-show-how...
Credit: Oka lab; CalTech, Pasadena
NIH support from: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
One day after head injury (left), bright dye along the edge of the brain suggests damage to the meninges, or the brain’s protective lining. After 35 days (right), the dye no longer appears, indicating the meninges may have healed.
Following head injury, the protective lining that surrounds the brain may get a little help from its friends: immune cells that spring into action to assist with repairs. In a new study, scientists from the National Institutes of Health watched in real-time as different immune cells took on carefully timed jobs to fix the damaged lining of the brain, also known as meninges, in mice. These results may help provide clues to the discovery that the meninges in humans may heal following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and why additional hits to the head can be so devastating.
More info: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-scientists-watc...
Credit: Larry Latour, Ph.D., National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), NIH
This MRI image shows adolescent brains activated during a memory task. NIH has released the first dataset from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The ABCD study is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States.
Read more: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-releases-first-...
Image credit: Dr. Richard Watts and ABCD/Univ. of VT P.I. Dr. Hugh Garavan
NIH support from: NIDA, NIMH, NIAAA, NCI, NICHD, NIMHD, NINDS, NIH OBSSR, NIH ORWH
This image shows distinct neural connections in a cross section of a mouse’s hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in the memory of facts and events. The large, crescent-shaped area in green is hippocampal zone CA1. Its highly specialized neurons, called place cells, serve as the brain’s GPS system to track location. In red is hippocampal zone CA2. It’s important for forming memories of social interactions. The blue area shows the transmission sites of nerve signals between neurons in the neighboring CA3 zone and dentate gyrus, part of the hippocampus involved in episodic memories.
More information: directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/09/21/snapshots-of-life-color-...
Credit: Raunak Basu, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
NIH funding from: National Institute of Mental Health
Scientists at NIH used electrical recordings to study how the human brain remembers. In a pair of studies, scientists at the National Institutes of Health explored how the human brain stores and retrieves memories. One study suggests that the brain etches each memory into unique firing patterns of individual neurons. Meanwhile, the second study suggests that the brain replays memories faster than they are stored.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-scientists-try-...
Credit: Zaghloul lab, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH
Another #stunning new building @UBC, brain health research facility | ©Ed Ng Photography | info@edngphotography.com #UBC #DMCBH #brain
Using state-of-the-art brain imaging technology, scientists at the National Institutes of Health filmed what happens in the brains of mice that developed cerebral malaria (CM). The results, published in PLOS Pathogens, reveal the processes that lead to fatal outcomes of the disease and suggest an antibody therapy that may treat it.
This image shows the brain of a mouse with cerebral malaria. White regions (left, brainstem and right, olfactory bulb) indicate areas of neuronal cell death and vascular leakage.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/raising-curtain-cer...
Credit: Image courtesy of Dorian McGavern, Ph.D., and Phillip Swanson II, Ph.D., National Institutes of Health
NIH-funded researchers have discovered that our brain’s cortex, or outer mantle, is composed of 180 distinct areas per hemisphere. For example, the image above shows areas connected to the three main senses – hearing (red), touch (green) vision (blue) and opposing cognitive systems (light and dark). The map is based on data from resting state fMRI scans performed as part of the Human Connectome Project.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/connectome-map-more...
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
Credit: Matthew Glasser, Ph.D., and David Van Essen, Ph.D., Washington University
NIH funding from: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
This image captures Purkinje cells, one of the main types of nerve cell found in the brain. These cells have elaborate branching structures called dendrites that receive signals from other nerve cells.
Credit: Yinghua Ma and Timothy Vartanian, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Life Magnified: www.nigms.nih.gov/education/life-magnified/Pages/10_purki...
In a study of epilepsy patients, researchers at the National Institutes of Health found that split seconds before we recall these events tiny electrical waves, called ripples, may flow through key parts of our brains that help store our memories, setting the stage for successful retrieval.
Read more: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/our-brains-may-ripp...
Credit: Zaghloul Lab, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH
Sections of brains from normal (left) and tauopathy (right) mice. The dark purple lines in the left image represent the hippocampus, the area most responsible for learning and memory. This structure is almost completely absent in the right image. An NIH-funded mouse study identifies a possible therapeutic target for a family of neurodegenerative diseases.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/untangling-cause-me...
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
Credit: Ashe Lab, University of MN
NIH funding from: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Brain scans of healthy volunteers have shown that human brains may drain waste through lymphatic vessels, the body’s sewer system.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-researchers-unc...
Credit: Reich Lab, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH
MRI data shows (left) areas of the skull preferentially affected by the amount of Neanderthal-derived DNA and (right) areas of the brain’s visual system in which Neanderthal gene variants influenced cortex folding (red) and gray matter volume (yellow).
More info: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/residual-echo-ancie...
Credit: Michael Gregory, M.D., NIMH Section on Integrative Neuroimaging, NIH
Tracts of white matter in a mouse brain acquired with diffusion tensor imaging. The brain is viewed from below and with the front of the brain to the right. The colors represent different fiber directions. Integrity of the white matter can be studied following brain injury using this visualization method.
Credit: Susan Schwerin, M. Budde, M. Shindell, J. Munasinghe, S. Juliano, L.G. Cohen, National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health
Rendering of three-dimensional image stack showing HIV virions (red) localized on filopodial bridges between an infected T cell (gold) and uninfected fetal astrocyte (blue) in vitro. Data from focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM).
See also www.electron.nci.nih.gov
Credit: Thao Do, Sriram Subramaniam, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
Many adolescents with substance use disorders take serious risks, including drunk driving, fighting, heavy drinking, drug injections, and more. To find out why users take such risks, researchers take pictures of the brains of typically developing adolescents and those who have a substance use disorder, while the adolescents are deciding between doing a cautious behavior or a risky one. The first row in the figure above shows brain activity while the kids are making decisions that lead to cautious behaviors. At that time, in many key decision-making areas of the brain – the colored areas – typically-developing adolescents have more brain activation than youths with substance use disorders. Similarly, while making decisions to do risky behaviors, typically developing adolescents again show more brain activation (second row). The brains of adolescents with substance use disorders don't work as hard as the brains of typically developing youths when they're deciding between doing a risky or a cautious action, and that could help explain why substance-using adolescents tend to take more risks. The researchers are now trying to find out whether those differences in activation are due to the drugs that some adolescents use, or whether the differences were there before the drug use began.
Credit: National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health
In a mouse model of stuttering (lower panel), there are fewer astrocytes, shown in green, compared to controls (upper panel) in the corpus callosum, the area of the brain that enables the left and right hemispheres to communicate.
Researchers believe that stuttering — a potentially lifelong and debilitating speech disorder — stems from problems with the circuits in the brain that control speech, but precisely how and where these problems occur is unknown. Using a mouse model of stuttering, scientists report that a loss of cells in the brain called astrocytes are associated with stuttering. The mice had been engineered with a human gene mutation previously linked to stuttering. The study, which appeared online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers insights into the neurological deficits associated with stuttering.
Read more:
www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-mice-iden...
Credit: Tae-Un Han, Ph.D., National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorders, NIH
In February 2008, NIDCD researchers reported that they'd used functional MRI to study the brains of musicians playing improvised jazz. The images revealed that a large brain region involved in monitoring one's performance shuts down during creative improvisation, while a small region involved in organizing self-initiated thoughts and behaviors is highly activated.
Credit: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health
Dr. Richard Coppola, NIMH MEG Core Facility, found his calling—to study the brain—before neuroscience was a field and before computers were in general use. In college at MIT, he studied electrical engineering with the hopes of using it to map the brain someday. When he came to NIH in 1970, Coppola introduced computers to his NIMH laboratory, drastically reducing the time needed to do experiments. Now, as director of the NIMH MEG (Magnetoencephalography) Core Facility, he provides NIH researchers a non-invasive method to study brain function. Read his oral history at bit.ly/2k4v0x5
Photo taken in 1983.
Credit: National Institutes of Health
Comparison of a healthy brain and a brain with severe Alzheimer’s Disease
Credit: National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health
A new study in mice uncovered a previously unknown role that the central amygdala can play in upgrading or downgrading pain signals in the brain’s circuitry.
Read more: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-mice-expl...
Credit: National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health/NIH
A major aim of the NIH-led Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative is to develop new technologies that allow us to look at the brain in many different ways on many different scales.
Here you get a close-up look at pyramidal neurons located in the hippocampus, a region of the mammalian brain involved in memory. While this tiny sample of mouse brain is densely packed with many pyramidal neurons, researchers used new ExLLSM technology to zero in on just three. This super-resolution, 3D view reveals the intricacies of each cell’s structure and branching patterns.
Read more on the NIH Director's Blog: bit.ly/2TSOng1
Credit: Yang Lab/University of California and K. Chung/MIT
NIH support from: NIMH, NINDS, and NIBIB
In a study of healthy volunteers, National Institutes of Health researchers found that our brains may solidify the memories of new skills we just practiced a few seconds earlier by taking a short rest. The results highlight the critically important role rest may play in learning.
Read more: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/want-learn-new-skil...
Credit: Cohen Lab/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH
Conrad Kufta and John Heiss, Surgical Neurology Branch, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Heiss and Kufta work on mapping the brain.
Credit: National Institutes of Health
In a study of flies, NIH scientists showed how the immune system may be a culprit in the damage caused by aging brain disorders.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-implicate...
Credit: Giniger Lab, NIH/NINDS
An image of an adult zebrafish brain showing fluorescent granular perithelial cells (green) atop blood vessels (purple).
National Institutes of Health researchers studying zebrafish have determined that a population of cells that protect the brain against diseases and harmful substances are not immune cells, as had previously been thought, but instead likely arise from the lining of the circulatory system.
This basic science finding may have implications for understanding age-related decline in brain functioning and how HIV infects brain cells.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-researchers-tra...
Credit: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health
The vasculature plays critical roles in brain development and function. It supplies oxygen and essential nutrients to the brain parenchyma as well as protects the brain from neurotoxic blood-borne substances. Zebrafish are an excellent model for studying how different genetic mutations and chemical exposures disrupt neurovascular development. In this confocal micrograph, optical sections through an embryonic zebrafish brain are projected into a single plane and the brain vasculature is color-coded for depth.
This image was chosen as a winner of the 2016 NIH funded research image call.
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
Credit: Jessica Plavicki, Peterson Lab, University of Wisconsin at Madison
NIH funding from: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
An ultrasensitive test has been developed that detects a corrupted protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition found in athletes, military veterans, and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma. This advance could lead to early diagnosis of these conditions and open new research into how they originate, according to National Institutes of Health scientists and their colleagues.
Read more: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-developed-test-...
Image credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases(NIAID)/NIH
Dorsal view of the brain of a 10-day old double transgenic zebrafish (MRC1a:eGFP; Kdrl:mcherry). Blood vessels are shown in magenta and a novel population of perivascular endothelial cells are shown in green.
Credit: B. Weinstein, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health
Human neurons (red) extend neural outgrowths across the 3D scaffold.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/3-d-technology-enriches-human-ner...
Credit: P. Moghe, Rutgers University
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
The NIH supported the study through grants from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB); the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS); the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA); and from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
Human neurons on the 3D scaffold exhibit firing activity (yellow) in response to electrical current.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/3-d-technology-enriches-human-ner...
Credit: P. Moghe, Rutgers University
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
The NIH supported the study through grants from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB); the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS); the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA); and from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
Male and female worms engage in different behaviors, which may result from sex-specific wiring patterns in the brain.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-funded-study-re...
Credit: Oliver Hobert, Ph.D., Columbia University
This image is not owned by the NIH. It is shared with the public under license. If you have a question about using or reproducing this image, please contact the creator listed in the credits. All rights to the work remain with the original creator.
NIH funding from: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)