The brain is a complex organ, and no one imaging mode can catch everything that’s going on inside it. Over the years, multiple ‘brain maps’ have emerged, each focusing on different brain processes, from metabolism to cognitive function. While these maps are important, using them in isolation limits the discoveries researchers can make from them.

Now a team from The Neuro has brought together more than 40 existing brain maps in one place. The database, called neuromaps, will help scientists find correlations between patterns across different brain regions, spatial scales, modalities and brain functions.

It provides a standardised space to view each map in comparison to each other, and assesses the statistical significance of these comparisons, to help researchers distinguish a meaningful correlation from a random pattern. The neuromaps database also helps standardise the code across maps, to improve the reproducibility of results.

The team published their findings in the journal Nature Methods and has made their data open-access on GitHub.

‘Ultimately, we hope that neuromaps will add a spark to the analysis of human brain maps and increase the accessibility of data and software tools to people with diverse research interests,’ said Justine Hansen, the paper’s co-first author. ‘As the rate at which new brain maps are generated in the field continues to grow, we hope that neuromaps will provide researchers with a set of standardised workflows for better understanding what these data can tell us about the human brain.’

This study was funded with the help of Fonds de Recherche du Quebec – Nature et Technologies (FRQNT), Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP), Helmholtz International BigBrain Analytics and Learning Laboratory (HIBALL), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Canada Research Chairs (CRC), National Institute of Health (NIH), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives (HBHL), and Brain Canada Future Leaders (BCF).