Context: Recently, Five sets of Indian brain templates and a brain atlas for five age groups covering late childhood to late adulthood (six to 60 years) have been developed by neuroscientists from National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS).

• NIMHANS is a medical institution located in Bangalore, Karnataka. It is the apex centre for mental health and neuroscience education in the country and operates autonomously.

Background

• The Montreal Neurological Index (MNI) template that India currently uses is based on Caucasian brains, which are different from Asian brains.
• The MNI template was made by averaging 152 healthy brain scans from just a small slice of the city’s population in North America.
• Some countries have their own scale to measure the brain, whereas India is still dependent on the Caucasian brain template.

Brain atlas

• A brain atlas is a brain map or a template which becomes the ‘standard’ against which brain abnormalities can be measured.
• A brain atlas helps researchers compare findings from different brain imaging methods like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and functional MRI (fMRI), or between healthy and diseased brain states, or across individuals.

Indian Brain Atlas (IBA)

• The average brain size of an Indian is smaller in height, width and volume in comparison to people of the Caucasian (western) and Eastern races (Chinese and Korean).
• Indian Brain Atlas is more similar to the Chinese and Korean atlases than Caucasian one.
• Differences are structural and are not associated with intelligence or behavior.

Key Fact

• Researchers at the IIIT Hyderabad created the first ever Indian Brain Atlas (IBA). They stated that the next step is to prepare atlases for different age groups to study age related effects on brain anatomy.

Significance

• The templates and atlas will provide more precise reference maps for areas of interest in individual patients with neurological disorders like strokes, brain tumors, and dementia.
• These templates and atlas will also help pool information more usefully in group studies of the human brain and psychological functions.
• It will aid the understanding of psychiatric illnesses like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), autism, substance dependence, schizophrenia, and mood disorders.
• Currently, Medical practitioners uses the brain atlas created by the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI), based on Caucasian brains, not ideal to analyze Indian population. Hence, these MRI images are likely to lead to a misdiagnosis as they are not based on Indian brains.
• Now, doctors can compare the MRI images with Indian Brain Atlas as reference to avoid misdiagnosis.

Road Ahead

• There have been similar attempts to develop brain templates previously in India, however they were typically focused on young adults and had a significantly smaller number of subjects. NIMHANS IBTs are based on a comprehensive scan.
• NIMHANS IBTs can be incorporated in normal protocols of brain imaging in India.