We are the map - History of the map of our brain

It all began very suddenly. Dinner, my daughter calling 911, then she drove me herself to the hospital. I actually did not understood much of what was happening... Some emotive remembrances while we were dining, and somebody telling me that I had to go to the doctor, fast.

I was never taken care of so swiftly. I would've been happy about that if I didn't notice the fact that, with all the medical care centers saturated, that only meant one thing: This was serious!

Inside; in a white, nearly spartan room that had a chair, a desk and a stretcher as sole furniture, someone that could've been my son blinded me with a flashlight asking me to smile, stick my tongue out... while he did a lot of foolish questions.

Everything seemed redundant even awkward until he asked me to close my eyes and lift my arms... Then I understood why my daughter helped me walk back to the car. I understood why I was forced to use a wheelchair. I understood what was I doing there. Because, when I opened my eyes I found out that: I did not lift my arm as I thought I did, and I didn't notice.

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A stroke, that's what Robert had. A stroke provoked by a blood clog that blocked an artery that supplies the right side of his brain with blood. The lack of strength on his left arm, the loss of sensitivity in the same area, the irregular smile, the lack of awareness of his pathology. Now it was obvious, everything fitted.

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- Hold on! Are you telling me that if you get a stroke on the right side of your brain you can be paralyzed and insensitive on the left side of your body... and not even notice it?!?

• Yes, my dear readers... And, repeating what I just wrote in the shape of a question does not make it more appealing.

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When we as a species performed nudity acts at the East of Africa, we did not have a clear understanding of the functions different parts of our body performed, we played "life" in "freestyle". We imagined that the pituitary gland excreted mucus, third eyes in the back of our head, hearths with feelings, energetic chakras... All things of the past and that the people today left behind as silly superstitions (because, nobody with two fingers of forehead believes that kind of stuff), because they've no scientific backup. NO, the fact that your aunt posts that kind of thing in her facebook does not make it real.

Well, to the point...
In a certain moment we noticed that the brain performed several functions (other more important than "cooling blood"), slowly leaving with no "administrative tasks" to do to the rest of the organs, soul, spirit or other things that leak and break when one has a stroke.

Some functions, depended of very specific areas of our favorite organ, and we understood that very clearly when we started to observe people that lacked of a piece in it. This is, the broken brains were -(and they still are!)- useful to understand how the healthy ones worked. How we work.

This is how we learned that some small parts did certain things, and they connected to other pieces as a complex puzzle. With all the possible problems a method like this one may have we built a map of the brain charting the functional parts. "Motor Cortex" to the piece that we need to move, "Visual Cortex" to the one we use to see, "Broca's Area" to the part in charge of speech (the one Hodor had issues with... and so on.

By BruceBlaus. When using this image in external sources it can be cited as:Blausen.com staff (2014). "Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014". WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436. - Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link

The map left, only had markers on places that could be easily perceived by our senses along with speech and memory. The rest of the brain held no particular functions in that atlas. But, we wanted a better map, and there were several people that actually enjoyed opening things up and looking how they work from the inside.

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The people that never had to face a brain before... Let me tell you, it ain't pretty, it is like a giant raisin with a yellowish color. You look at it and you've a hard time choosing whether to feel disgust, wonder or respect. But them, the legendary brain scouts, saw poetry in that shape.

One of these "sadistic romanticists" that was vital to sciences Korbinian Brodmann. He, loved to grab brains along with his partners, cut them in several pieces and look at them under the microscope. Brains that came from people, monkeys, cats, lions, moles, foxes, mice... you name it, it is probably in the list.

It was a bad moment to be his pet.

At a moment, they noticed several things. First, that the brain was a mix of yellowish grays not very well defined (with a couple of dark stains, some blueish). There was also some darker and lighter gray-yellow parts. The darker gray that was in the exterior part of the brain and some areas of the center was named "Grey Matter" (Did I ever mention, perhaps in another article, that there's one thing scientists lack of? Originality when picking a name!). And, the lighter gray areas were named "White Matter".
By looking closer, they observed that the grey matter was composed by the part of the neurons that the core also has, along with all the hardware needed to make proteins. On the other hand, the white matter was composed by the extensions that neurons use to communicate with others: axons.

Another thing they observed was that, in the cortical gray matter (the outer part), the neural formations shaped in a layered pattern. In the areas where the mapped functions were different, the layers changed their thickness, size and general structure, also the neurons that composed that varied their shape and size. Back then, we did not know how that network of bodies and connections worked, but we understood that the change of shape had something to do with the change of the function. They also observed a lot of new structures with undefined functions... but, meh, leave some problems to the scientists of the future!

By 1909, after slicing more brains than a hypothetical son of Hannibal Lecter, Brodmann released his map of the brain cortex defining the frontiers of the areas by observing the drastic changes in the composition. He did such a good job, that we still use that map today

Source:spot.colorado.edu

Yes, we use a brain map that a guy made over 100 years ago. Vintage, totally anti-hipster.

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Very nice, very relevant... grandpa, but... Don't we have something a bit more "updated"? After all, we do have better tools other than slicing and dicing brains around. We don't even need to wait for the owners to die to take a look at them.
We left knives behind, and now prefer to lock people up inside a claustrophobic giant electromagnet that rotates around the subject... and we get an HD image (Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI), and: we can see it "live"! Checking the parts that are working at a specific moment, with no need to abuse of drills or sticking probes. By comparing the blood flow we can infer what parts of the brain are active. When certain tasks are performed, specific areas of the brain require more oxygen, blood flow increases to supply that need. This oxygenated blood flow has hemoglobin that has magnetic properties we can measure, this one is called Functional magnetic resonance imaging (or fMRI).

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The cloak of invisibility is gone (or at least it moved a bit to the side); allowing us to see what happens inside. Converting our neuroscientist from butchers to photographers. But, we still use the same good old map.

So, after years of development, we started from scratch and updated our methods. From cutting and chopping to watching brains "live" on HD. From manually taking notes to teach our computers how to process the images. From 50 original areas, now we've over 180.

Interesting part to consider, to achieve this, hundreds of people were analyzed by Magnetic Resonance, functional images while idle and while performing particular activities, other snapshots were taken to measure the thickness of the gray matter and amount of myelin (a substance that covers the axons). This way, today we've the brain divided in 180 parts. But, to know that this is the definitive map, we've to put it to the test... beat it up. If after that it is still standing: It will prove that it was not just a beautiful coincidence (even when there's very little chance that it is such).

The first attack was done. The whole process was redone from scratch to see if the result was the same. Same amount of brains, scans, tests... Remapping everything
The same map returned as a result.

This does not mean that it is "the map", it just means that it is consistent, an average of hundreds of images is not enough to make a map of people that has particular singularities. We are special and different, individuals. The map was matched up against individuals... And did not match!

Ha! I got you there! It did match, and also spotted dynamic areas of the brain, places that not everyone shares with others

A predictive model derived from average sampling, two times... Is good to be uses in an individual.

A map, that can tell us EXACTLY where a blood clog is during a stroke.

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This article would mean nothing with something VITAL... THE MAP!