Some of you have probably heard of President Obama’s BRAIN initiative.  It’s basically a concerted (federally supported) effort aimed at figuring out the underpinnings of neurological and psychiatric diseases that have a strong brain basis, as well as trying to understand how a healthy brain works.  Concurrently, there is an incredibly strong push to have open source data sharing.  This combination is a geek’s perfect storm.

Case in point:

The BigBrain project.  An interactive atlas that allows you to scroll through the brain at ultra high resolution.  Here’s a video demonstration…but I’d recommend requesting a free account here, and doing some hands-on scrolling for yourself!

The Human Connectome Project.  Huge initiative to map the human brain.  They constantly release neuroimaging data (free!…well, unless you want them to send it to you, in which case you just pay for the materials and shipping fees).  Check out their official site here.

As a side note, looks like we’ll be having images from insanely high field magnets in the near future…on the order of 11+T (read the article here).  I don’t know how I feel about this, given that our 7T scanner causes some pretty significant physiological experiences.  But, I’m anxious to see the images!