Researchers have published the most detailed atlas yet of the basal ganglia, a cluster of structures deep in the brain, according to Nature.
Nature reports that a global team profiled nearly 26 million cells from the region to build a reference database that spans species. STAT puts the total at more than 25 million cells and describes the result as a parts list: which cell types live in the basal ganglia and how they are arranged. The work appeared on November 12 as a set of papers in Cell, with atlases covering the human brain alongside macaque and marmoset brains.
Why should a lab care about a map? Nature notes that the basal ganglia are linked to conditions from Parkinson's disease to addiction, and says the team built the atlas as a shared reference that researchers can use to study those conditions. A shared map also gives different labs the same cell types and the same coordinates to compare their own results against.
If you could pull up one cell type from a reference this size, which would it be?
North Star Scientific
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