4D atlas representing mouse brain development from adolescence to adulthood now available on EBRAINS

Mouse brain atlases provide detailed maps that researchers use to study the mouse brain, much like travellers require maps to navigate unfamiliar lands. A challenge for studies of the adolescent mouse brain is that the developing brain rapidly changes, making atlases for the adult mouse brain or selected developmental stages inadequate. University of Oslo researchers have now overcome this problem by releasing a new developmental mouse brain atlas. This atlas covers 52 days of development, from day 4 after birth through to the adult brain, offering an important resource for neuroscientific research.

“We integrated publicly available mouse brain data from different postnatal ages and modelled the day-to-day changes so that we could synthetize data covering all days up to adulthood," says PhD student Harry Carey, co-first author on the new publication in Nature Communications. “We have already integrated the atlas into several open-source tools, with more to come,” Carey continues, “In this way researchers will have several opportunities for using atlas resources tailored to the stage of development they are interested in.”

PhD researcher Heidi Kleven, also co-first author, says “The new atlas resource is compatible with the widely used Allen Mouse Brain atlas. Any results that researchers discover in the developing brain can immediately be compared with findings from adult brains”.

The new atlas resources are openly available via the EBRAINS research infrastructure and has already been used in independent studies by researchers outside the University of Oslo.

“Atlases and tools for studying brain development has been sorely lacking in the field,” says Ingvild Bjerke, senior author on the project. “We expect it to be used to gain important insights into typical brain development as well as neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, schizophrenia and ADHD.”