The data could provide significant insights into neurological ailments and poorly understood developmental disorders such as autism.
Dec 13, 2024 07:30 IST First published on: Dec 13, 2024 at 07:30 IST
A baby’s brain starts developing in the womb and by the time the child is born, they have most of the brain cells, or neurons, they need. For a long time, birth was seen as the starting point for studying the effects of the environment on the brain. However, in the last half a decade, advances in imaging have revealed that the brain of a foetus too absorbs influences. Last year, 200 scientists from around the world, led by Oxford University neuro experts, released images of early brain anatomy and the intricate neural network that carries some of the earliest signals around the organ. Now, researchers at IIT-Madras have come out with a 3D map of five developing baby brains from the second trimester. This map, now the most detailed high-resolution representation of the foetal brain, shows how it undergoes rapid growth during this critical stage. Called Dharini, the atlas maps over 5,000 brain sections and more than 500 brain regions. The data could provide significant insights into neurological ailments and poorly understood developmental disorders such as autism.
The origins of developmental disorders have been debated for more than a century. The brain chemistry that leads to autism, for example, has been linked to both genes and environment. But taking scans of sleeping babies is hard enough — they move around and blur the images — doing so for the foetus kicking in the womb is even more so. The IIT-Madras used the brains of five stillborns in the second trimester — at 14, 17, 21, 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy. The brains were frozen and thinly sliced, enabling scientists to see the structures. They were thinly sliced using complex robotic instrumentation — the slices are of 10 to 20 microns thickness, equivalent to 1/10th or 1/5th the thickness of human hair. The technology technology used for freezing, slicing, creating plates, digitising, and putting the map together was indigenously developed by the IIT researchers.
A number of studies have suggested that brain development may be particularly vulnerable to factors such as maternal nutrition, infection and stress during pregnancy. The Oxford University-led research underlined the vital public health message: A mother’s health, educational, nutritional and environmental needs must be met to ensure that her child’s body and brain develop healthily. The IIT-Madras atlas could help convey this message with even more nuanced data. This is especially important in a country where the nutritional and health needs of a large section of pregnant women remain unmet, despite several interventions by the government. A better understanding of how the human brain works could also be an aid in AI development.
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