Project Aims

Project Outline

The Electronic Atlas of the Developing Human Brain (EADHB) is funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Brain Project (grant numbers: HD39928-02 followed by R01 MH070370).

The long-term aim of this work is to create a digital atlas comprising:

3-D reconstructions at all stages of human development from Carnegie Stage 12 (CS12; ~26days post conception [dpc]) to CS23 (~ 56 dpc). These 3D models are generated using Optical Projection Tomography (OPT; Sharpe et al 2002).
Anatomical annotations of the 3-D models linked to an anatomical database.

The digital atlas is also linked to a gene expression database that has been developed from the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas Project gene expression database (EMAGE). Again, the major funder is NIH, as above, with additional funding from EU FP6 (contract number 011993; www.dgemap.org).

With the agreement of the funders, both the digital atlas and the gene expression database have been brought together on the HUDSEN website and are now the:

In the future, the HUDSEN EADHB aims to provide the wider scientific and medical communities with a dynamic tool for documenting and analyzing gene expression patterns and morphological changes in the developing human brain.