IIT Madras: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras is mapping the human brain using neuroscience, engineering, and advanced imaging.
The Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre (SGBC) has become one of the important research centres that aims to “map the entire human brain, cell by cell, and share it with the world.”, according to official information.
The institute noted that the centre is headed by Professor Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam of the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras, who led the process to convert human brains into very high-quality digital images: freezing the brain, slicing it into very thin pieces, staining them, and scanning them with large-scale equipment developed in collaboration with an Indian company. In a social media post on X, the institute sated: “Led by Prof Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam from the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras, with Dr Richa Verma as Scientific Director, SGBC has developed indigenous technologies for high-resolution brain imaging and digitisation. Noting that the field is too complex for a single country to solve, Professor Sivaprakasam also stated that the department has partnered with universities in the United States, such as the University of South Carolina, Johns Hopkins, a university in Washington, DC, and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Most are visiting professors who come and stay for two or three months. Dr Richa Verma, scientific director of the centre, explained the goal behind the initiative: “Our mission is to understand how the human brain is organised. Much of what we know comes from studies with monkey brains, and although that has helped us learn, many treatments that work in those disease models have not been applicable to humans. The scientific director noted that the centre aims to study how the brain changes when a disease, such as strokes, occurs. IIT Madras Director V Kamakoti pointed out that the centre also studies brains affected by diseases such as rabies, dementia, and Alzheimer’s, to understand how these diseases change the structure of the brain.
Established in 2022, the centre has grown from five members to more than 200 doctors, scientists, technicians, and engineers, according to IIT Madras. Each digital brain can generate nearly 1.5 petabytes of data. “Today we have 30 collaborators worldwide, in seven or eight countries, on different continents.
“With 400+ donated brains and global collaborations, SGBC is building an open resource to advance our understanding of the human brain and neurological diseases,” the post read. This continues to grow, and the next stage is for students to also come and stay for longer periods,” Prof Sivaprakasam said to a Colombian website.
