Mapping out a new era in brain research

The complex architecture of the human brain and how its billions of nerve cells communicate has baffled the greatest minds for centuries.

But now, new technology is allowing neuroscientists to map the brain's connections in ever-greater detail.

The creation of a map, or "connectome" as it has been dubbed, is raising hopes that brain disorders like autism and schizophrenia will be better understood in the future, perhaps cured.

The Human Connectome Project (HCP), a U.S. government-funded scheme, recently began trials on healthy volunteers with a state-of-the-art diffusion-imaging scanner.

Built by German engineering company Siemens, it works by tracking the passage of water molecules through nerve fibers, giving a more accurate picture of the brain's structure and its neuronal pathways, scientists say.

"The diffusion image is a map of the water diffusion which we then convert into a marker for the fiber pathways," says Van Wedeen, director of Connectomics at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

"We then reconstruct it through computer algorithms that explain the water diffusion that we have observed."

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