An interactive atlas of the human brain

The brain,
across space and time.

A living reference built from real imaging data. Explore adult anatomy in three dimensions, follow the brain as it folds from the fetal period to adolescence, and trace the ideas that made neuroscience.

Open the atlasThe history of neurology
TemplateMNI ICBM 152 2009c
Structures—
SegmentationCerebrA · CIT168
Dragto rotate
Fig. 1The adult human brain, rendered in real time from the MNI ICBM 152 template. Cortex as stippled surface, deep nuclei in brass.
Abstract

Most anatomical illustrations show one brain, at one moment, from one angle. Dynamic Brain shows the organ as it really is: a three-dimensional structure that changes over a lifetime. Every surface is computed from population atlases of magnetic resonance images, every number is traced to a peer-reviewed source, and every schematic form is labelled as such.

0Atlas structures
0Developmental stages
0Fibre tracts
0Sourced data points
Development

From a smooth fetal brain
to the folded cortex.

Select a stage. Each shape is a population average from fetal, neonatal and paediatric MRI atlases, not an artist's impression.

Loading atlas…
Fig. 2Fetal brain at 21 weeks of gestation. Shapes shown at equal size to compare folding.
    The neuron doctrine

    Eighty-six billion cells,
    each one an individual.

    In 1888 Santiago Ramón y Cajal showed that the nervous system is made of discrete cells, not a continuous net. His drawings of stained neurons still define how we picture the brain.

    Fig. 3Cortical pyramidal neurons in the manner of a Golgi preparation, drawn procedurally. Brass points are action potentials travelling from the dendrites to the axon.
    ≈ 86 bn

    neurons in the adult human brain, about 16 billion of them in the cerebral cortex.

    Azevedo et al., 2009
    ≈ 120 m/s

    top conduction velocity of large myelinated axons, roughly 430 km per hour.

    Classical electrophysiology
    ≈ 20 %

    of the body's resting energy is used by an organ that makes up about 2 % of body weight.

    Raichle & Gusnard, 2002
    History of neurology

    Thirty-six centuries
    of looking inside.

    From the first written word for "brain" to maps of every major fibre tract: the milestones this atlas stands on.

    Methods

    No invented shapes.

    Built only from openly licensed data, checked twice against the original publications.

    Data

    Population atlases

    MNI ICBM 152, CerebrA and CIT168 for the adult brain; CRL-2025, dHCP and NIHPD for development; HCP1065 for fibre tracts.

    Geometry

    Computed surfaces

    Surfaces are extracted from the segmentations with Surface Nets and Taubin smoothing. Nothing is modelled by hand.

    Review

    Second reading

    An independent second review against the original papers confirmed 98.1 % of all data points. The rest were corrected.

    Access

    Open the atlas.

    Sign in with your e-mail address. We send you a six-digit code. No password, no registration form.

    Sign in with e-mail