Mapping the Human Brain

For this week’s Science Nation, Miles O’Brien reports on a neuroanatomist who is using real brains to build three-dimensional brain maps.

Neuroanatomist Jacopo Annese, director of the brain observatory at University of California, Los Angeles, collects and slices up brains from front to back and then places them on glass, stains and digitizes them. A normal-sized brain produces about 3,000 slivers.

“We are studying brain structure and trying to understand how the architecture of the brain supports our behavior, our thoughts, our memories, our way of thinking,” Annese says. Miles O’Brien reports for the National Science Foundation’s latest Science Nation.

For the record, the National Science Foundation is an underwriter of the NewsHour.