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UTHSCSA
DEAN’S MESSAGE
UT SCHOOL OF MEDICINE UPDATE: BRAINMAP
CHANGING THE WAY WE STUDY NEUROSCIENCE
By Francisco González-Scarano, MD
Researchers around the world can count on a definitive resource
when analyzing the structure and function of the human brain;
that tool is located within the UT School of Medicine in San An-
tonio (SOM), and it is called BrainMap (http://brainmap.org).
BrainMap is furthering our understanding of virtually every brain
disorder, from psychiatric conditions such as depression, bipolar
disorder, schizophrenia and PTSD, to autism and neurological
diseases such as Parkinson Disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer
Disease and more.
As one of the most extensive databases for brain research any-
where in the world, BrainMap provides software and tools to share
neuroimaging results and enable meta-analytic studies of human
brain function and structure in healthy and diseased subjects.
Rather than a collection of images, BrainMap is a compilation of
more than 4,000 published, peer-reviewed functional and structural
neuroimaging papers collectively reporting more than 15,000 ex-
periments that map areas of the brain using three-dimensional x, y,
z coordinates, yielding data that offers a range of applications much electronic compilation allows researchers to reorganize and analyze
more than any group of images. This compilation of qualitative and
quantitative data from thousands of published studies gives re-
searchers around the world ready access to information on virtually
30 San Antonio Medicine • July 2016
any brain disorder.
In a clinical setting, a physician might scrutinize an MRI to in-
vestigate the cause of a patient’s persistent headaches. But for re-
searchers undertaking a statistical analysis, BrainMap offers a wealth
of data comparing patients from around the world, with extensive
meta-data coding and rigorous, ongoing quality control. Approxi-
mately 700 peer-reviewed journal articles are now based on the in-
formation contained in BrainMap.
BrainMap is continuously being updated. The database collects
the results of brain-related experiments, showing effects and their
corresponding stereotactic coordinates, along with meta-data in-
cluding size and intensity of effects, the location of the study, details
on patient population, the types of imaging used, experimental-de-
sign details, and more.
The database allows researchers to search all published studies for
a given disorder and compute the most consistent findings. This
data in very sophisticated ways to try and understand disease
processes, to develop biomarkers of diseases and to examine the net-
work properties of brains.
BrainMap is frequently used to see whether a particular pattern