Creating the next generation of highly detailed human brain models by building on the BigBrain - the first openly accessible, microscopic resolution 3D model of the human brain.

News About the BigBrain

Confluence of Art and Neuroscience

date: Nov 24, 2023

BigBrain-Inspired Art by OHBM 2023 Prize Winner Celesti Kozub

BigBrain project excites at OHBM2023

date: Nov 24, 2023

OHBM 2023 BigBrain Booth: A booth showcasing the present and future of brain research

BigBrain featured on Ici Radio Canada

date: Sept 17, 2023

The BigBrain was featured in a video segent on Ici Radio Canada.

Featured: Laminar Thickness Profiles

date: Aug 21, 2023

We recently published a study on the variation of cortical laminar structure in the BigBrain dataset. The cerebral cortex consists of six cortical layers which are horizontally superimposed stripes of gray matter with characteristic features such as size, type and density of the neurons.

Justine Hansen awarded the Karl Zilles Award

date: July 22, 2023

Congratulations Justine!
Justine Hansen was awarded the Karl Zilles Award in Integrative Neuroscience, recognising her work in integrating modern neuroanatomical approaches with multi-modal in-vivo neuroimaging at OHBM 2023. Congratulations!

Understanding our brain

date: June 5 2023

Understanding our brain
Interview with Katrin Amunts and Alan Evans
10 May 2023

Featured: voluba

date: June 1 2023

A common problem in high-resolution brain atlasing is spatial anchoring of volumes of interest from imaging experiments into the anatomical context of an ultrahigh-resolution reference model like BigBrain.

Architecture and connectivity of the human angular gyrus and of its homolog region in the macaque brain

date: April 2023

The angular gyrus (AG) is a horseshoe-shaped region of the posterior inferior parietal lobe in the human brain. It has attracted major interest since it’s a higher-order associative cortical region that plays a prominent role in the integration of multiple sensory systems.

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HIBALL Year Three

date: Mar 31 2022

Celebrating three years of the HIBALL partnership.

Full dataset over 1TB

Scans at 20μm resolution

Multiple formats

An expanding brain atlas

A thriving community

What People Say About the BigBrain

Why create the BigBrain

A message from Dr. Zilles

the major advantage of the BigBrain for our work is that the image data of the human brain are registered as a 3D volume at very high spatial resolution. Since the human brain is folded, any part of the cortical ribbon may be subjected to the geometrical effects of this folding, i.e. the cortex is obliquely or even tangentially sectioned at various sites in a 2D representation, e.g. in images of single microtome sections. This effect hampers the measurement of any cortical structure which is bound to the 3D columnar architecture of the cortex. In contrast, the BigBrain allows analyses in 3D, and thus has opened the door to many studies which would not be possible in 2D representations.

Martha Crago

Vice-Principal (Research + Innovation) McGill University

With HIBALL the partnership between two world-leading research institutions in computational neuroscience will provide an important platform for the scientists to conduct innovative, interdisciplinary, and complementary research in a rich and collaborative setting.

Yoshua Bengio

Mila Scientific Director, Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute

HIBALL assembles a team with world-leading expertise in neuroimaging, artificial intelligence, neuroscience and neuroinformatics, which complements well the team at Mila. The active participation of several PIs with ties to Mila is very exciting, and we anticipate this lab will further expand the collaboration between neuroscience and AI experts in the Montreal ecosystem, leading to cutting-edge discoveries in both fields.

Viktor Jirsa

Directeur de Recherche, CNRS

HIBALL can build on a remarkable expertise and international reputation and will lead to high impact contributions in Human Brain Atlasing, Neuroinformatics, and Machine Learning.