IIT Madras launches high-tech research centre to map human brains

With the aim to map human brains at the cellular level, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras launched a state-of-the-art research centre on Saturday.

Leveraging on large-scale multi-disciplinary research, 'Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre' aims to become a global centre for human brain research with transformative impact in the fields of science and medicine.

The centre was inaugurated by Prof K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India.

"There is no full mapping done on the human brain yet. By means of microscopic study IIT Madras will do this research. 10 IIT professors, 30 researchers, renowned professors of the world and 25 global researchers have associated with the Institute for the research," said Raghavan.

IIT Madras is looking forward to training hundreds of undergraduate and postgraduate students in neuroscience and computing and machine learning techniques on cutting-edge brain data at this centre.

The first ongoing project of the centre titled 'Computational and Experimental Platform: for High-Resolution Terapixel Imaging of ex-vivo Human Brains' for high-throughput light microscopic imaging of whole human brains is supported by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. Through this project, the centre has developed a high-throughput histology pipeline that processes whole human brains into high-resolution digital images.

Using this technology platform, the centre is imaging post-mortem human brains of different types and ages. The centre has already acquired whole-brain serial-section, cell-resolution volumes of three developing brains to date. These unique first-in-class data sets that provide a high-resolution view of developing brains will be released in the near future.

(ANI)