Dataset Information

BrainWiki-A Wiki-Style, User Driven, Comparative Brain Anatomy Tool.

ABSTRACT: The mouse is the most important animal model within neuroscientific research, a position strengthened by the wide-spread use of transgenic mouse models. Discoveries in animals are followed by corroboration in humans, and the interchange between these fields of research is essential to our understanding of the human brain. With the advent of advanced technologies such as single-cell transcriptomics, epigenetic profiling and diffusion MRI, many prominent research institutes and collaborations have emerged, aiming to construct complete human or mouse brain atlases with data on gene expression, connectivity and cell types. These initiatives are indispensable resources, but frequently require extensive, time-consuming development, and rely on updates by the provider. They often come in the shape of applications which require practice or prior technical know-how. Importantly, none of them place the human and the mouse brain next to each other to allow for immediate comparison. We present BrainWiki, a user-friendly, web-based atlas that links the human and the mouse brain together, side-by-side. The platform gives the user a simple overview of brain anatomy along with published articles relating to each brain region that allows the user to delve deeper into the current state of research concerning circuitry, brain functions and pathology. The website relies on interactivity and supports user contributions resulting in a dynamic website that evolves at the pace of neuroscience. It is designed to allow for constant updates and new features in the future which will contain data such as gene expression and neuronal cell types.

SUBMITTER: Forsell L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7604473 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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BrainWiki-A Wiki-Style, User Driven, Comparative Brain Anatomy Tool.

Forsell Linda L Vos Esther Naomi EN Jayaraman Keerthi K Edman Axel A Hussaini S Abid SA

Frontiers in neuroanatomy 20201019

The mouse is the most important animal model within neuroscientific research, a position strengthened by the wide-spread use of transgenic mouse models. Discoveries in animals are followed by corroboration in humans, and the interchange between these fields of research is essential to our understanding of the human brain. With the advent of advanced technologies such as single-cell transcriptomics, epigenetic profiling and diffusion MRI, many prominent research institutes and collaborations have ...[more]

PMID: 33192339

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Project description:In vivo neuroimaging studies have established several reproducible volumetric sex differences in the human brain, but the causes of such differences are hard to parse. While mouse models are useful for understanding the cellular and mechanistic bases of sex-biased brain development in mammals, there have been no attempts to formally compare mouse and human sex differences across the whole brain to ascertain how well they translate. Addressing this question would shed critical light on use of the mouse as a translational model for sex differences in the human brain and provide insights into the degree to which sex differences in brain volume are conserved across mammals. Here, we use cross-species structural magnetic resonance imaging to carry out the first comparative neuroimaging study of sex-biased neuroanatomical organization of the human and mouse brain. In line with previous findings, we observe that in humans, males have significantly larger and more variable total brain volume; these sex differences are not mirrored in mice. After controlling for total brain volume, we observe modest cross-species congruence in the volumetric effect size of sex across 60 homologous brain regions (r=0.30; e.g.: M>F amygdala, hippocampus, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and hypothalamus and F>M anterior cingulate, somatosensory, and primary auditory cortices). This cross-species congruence is greater in the cortex (r=0.33) than non-cortex (r=0.16). By incorporating regional measures of gene expression in both species, we reveal that cortical regions with greater cross-species congruence in volumetric sex differences also show greater cross-species congruence in the expression profile of 2835 homologous genes. This phenomenon differentiates primary sensory regions with high congruence of sex effects and gene expression from limbic cortices where congruence in both these features was weaker between species. These findings help identify aspects of sex-biased brain anatomy present in mice that are retained, lost, or inverted in humans. More broadly, our work provides an empirical basis for targeting mechanistic studies of sex-biased brain development in mice to brain regions that best echo sex-biased brain development in humans.

Dataset Information

BrainWiki-A Wiki-Style, User Driven, Comparative Brain Anatomy Tool.

Publications

BrainWiki-A Wiki-Style, User Driven, Comparative Brain Anatomy Tool.

Similar Datasets

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