Overview
- An NIH-backed BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network published first-draft developmental maps that track how brain cell types emerge, differentiate, and mature in humans, mice, and primates.
- The studies identify developmental time windows when genetic risk for conditions such as autism and schizophrenia concentrates, and report previously unknown or human-specific cell types.
- A separate Nature paper introduces NextBrain, built from five post-mortem human brains sectioned into about 10,000 pieces each and aligned with MRI using AI to label 333 regions.
- NextBrain was validated on thousands of MRI datasets, including application to more than 3,000 living scans for aging analyses, and enables fine-grained labeling in minutes on clinical-quality images.
- All underlying data, annotations, and tools are public, including through the FreeSurfer platform, with authors noting the atlases are early drafts and that broader sampling and clinical validation remain ahead.