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of brain activity extends across multiple types of experimental chal-
lenges. For example, a scientist who wants to learn about the brain
areas engaged by social cognition can search the database for differ-
ent experiments relating to this question. The researcher accesses the to design neuromodulatory treatments for other disorders as well,
dataset and collects all the information, looking to determine simi-
larities and differences.
BrainMap data also helps determine whether activation or atrophy
in certain brain areas is specific to one disease or common across
multiple diseases. Consider the focus of recently published research
looking for certain areas of the brain that may be affected by multi-
ple psychiatric disorders. Prior to the advent of databases such as
BrainMap, answering this question would be a massive undertaking.
Comparing multiple independent experiments produces much more
rigorous results with far greater efficiency.
Researchers using BrainMap determined that multiple psychiatric
disorders, including schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, bipo-
lar depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder all were associated
with cortical atrophy in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate
gyrus bilaterally. Further, they demonstrated using BrainMap that
these regions formed a closely integrated functional network1. As a
result, there’s now an awareness of the need to redefine psychiatric
disorders in diagnostic criteria to better match their biology.
BrainMap is also key to advances in some pre-operative mapping.
For example, studies have identified which areas of the brain are en-
gaged in different tasks. BrainMap sorts this information in an ap-
plication that allows physicians to look at any brain area to help in
planning regions to avoid during neurosurgery.
Another area of growing significance is connectomics, the study
of the brain’s information transfer properties. BrainMap is further-
ing our understanding of the movement of information through
the brain and the information architecture of the brain, or connec-
tomic modeling. This is useful in studying abnormalities that affect
not a region or structure of the brain, but a particular communica-
tion network.
Many conditions are now being examined as network disorders.
For example, connectomic research in non-human primates by
Mahlon Delong and colleagues at Emory University was fundamen-
tal in motivating the use of deep-brain stimulation for Parkinson
Disease. Connectomics mapping using diffusion tensor imaging by
Helen Mayberg, also at Emory, informed the first clinical trials of
deep-brain stimulation in major depressive disorder. In a similar way, order of the brain’s white matter. However, MS also affects gray mat-
Brainmap-based modeling has informed ongoing neuromodulatory
DEAN’S MESSAGE
treatment trials using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder.
This meta-analytic network modeling approach is now being used
including chronic pain, tinnitus and auditory verbal hallucinations
in schizophrenia.
BrainMap was created in 1988 by Peter Fox, MD, Professor of
Radiology, Psychiatry, Neurology and Physiology. Fox is also the Di-
rector of the Research Imaging Institute (RII), a department-level,
research-dedicated component within the School. Fox created the
BrainMap as a way to apply standard coordinates to a collection of
brain images for research purposes. The project was in the design
phase when he was recruited to direct the RII at its inception in
1991. Fox led the charge for researchers to assign three-dimensional
x, y, z coordinates to locations within the brain. While his belief in
using Cartesian coordinates to create maps of the human brain was
initially met with skepticism, it soon became the prevailing standard
and has forged BrainMap into the powerful resource that it is today.
Fox has been at the helm of improvements and additions to it ever
since, building it up to a resource composed of data from more than
130,000 subjects. Accessible online at BrainMap.org, the site pro-
vides free software that allows researchers to access the database, con-
duct their own searches and analyses, and even add their own data
for review and possible inclusion into the database. The result is the
continuous addition and updating of information on virtually all
brain diseases.
In addition to overseeing BrainMap, Fox’s expertise in brain func-
tion, brain imaging, and using images to explore both brain diseases
and normal function has led the RII to become one of the nation’s
preeminent neuroscience imaging centers.
The RII is a research resource maintaining its own grant portfolio
and operates as an “open door” laboratory, providing access to in-
vestigators from other departments and institutions. Its mission is
to perform basic, clinical and translational research using noninva-
sive, biomedical imaging methods for measuring the structure and
function of living organisms, with the highest priority given to neu-
roscience research.
BrainMap is furthering our understanding of the most challenging
diseases of our time. Using the database, Fox is currently assisting
with research on multiple sclerosis, commonly understood as a dis-
ter structures in an anatomically non-random pattern, as was
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visit us at www.bcms.org 31