The Digital Brain Bank, an open access platform for post-mortem datasets
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- Emory University, United States
- Copenhagen Zoo, Denmark
- University of Chicago, United States
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
- University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
- Radboud Universiteit, Netherlands
Abstract
Post-mortem MRI provides the opportunity to acquire high-resolution datasets to investigate neuroanatomy, and validate the origins of image contrast through microscopy comparisons. We introduce the Digital Brain Bank (open.win.ox.ac.uk/DigitalBrainBank), a data release platform providing open access to curated, multimodal post-mortem neuroimaging datasets. Datasets span three themes - Digital Neuroanatomist: datasets for detailed neuroanatomical investigations; Digital Brain Zoo: datasets for comparative neuroanatomy; Digital Pathologist: datasets for neuropathology investigations. The first Digital Brain Bank release includes twenty one distinctive whole-brain diffusion MRI datasets for structural connectivity investigations, alongside microscopy and complementary MRI modalities. This includes one of the highest-resolution whole-brain human diffusion MRI datasets ever acquired, whole-brain diffusion MRI in fourteen non-human primate species, and one of the largest post-mortem whole-brain cohort imaging studies in neurodegeneration. The Digital Brain Bank is the culmination of our lab's investment into post-mortem MRI methodology and MRI-microscopy analysis techniques. This manuscript provides a detailed overview of our work with post-mortem imaging to date, including the development of diffusion MRI methods to image large post-mortem samples, including whole, human brains. Taken together, the Digital Brain Bank provides cross-scale, cross-species datasets facilitating the incorporation of post-mortem data into neuroimaging studies.
Data availability
The Digital Brain Bank (https://open.win.ox.ac.uk/DigitalBrainBank) is a data release platform providing open access to curated, multimodal post-mortem neuroimaging datasets. All datasets described in this manuscript are available through the Digital Brain Bank, with details of access provided within the manuscript and on the website. Code for the Digital Brain Bank resource is available at https://git.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/thanayik/dbb. When available, details of associated processing code for each dataset is linked to the dataset's Information page on the Digital Brain Bank website. Source data for the corpus callosum analysis in Fig 3c is provided in a Supplementary File.
Article and author information
Author details
Benjamin C Tendler
Katherine L Bryant
Alexandre A Khrapitchev
Funding
Wellcome Trust (202788/Z/16/Z)
- Benjamin C Tendler
Cancer Research UK (C5255/A15935)
- Alexandre A Khrapitchev
National Research Foundation of South Africa
- Paul R Manger
Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (202788/Z/16/Z,MR/K01014X/1)
- Ricarda AL Menke
Wellcome Trust (202788/Z/16/Z)
- Jeroen Mollink
Wellcome Trust
- Duncan Mortimer
Medical Research Council (MR/K02213X/1)
- Menuka Pallebage-Gamarallage
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/M011224/1)
- Lea Roumazeilles
IDEXLYON IMPULSION 2020, Labex CORTEX (IDEX/IMP/2020/14,ANR-11-LABX-0042)
- Jerome Sallet
NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre
- Connor Scott
Wellcome Trust (202788/Z/16/Z)
- Adele Smart
Wellcome Trust
- Taylor Hanayik
Motor Neurone Disease Association
- Martin R Turner
China Scholarship Council
- Chaoyue Wang
Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (221933/Z/20/Z,215573/Z/19/Z,MR/L009013/1)
- Saad Jbabdi
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO (BB/N019814/1,452-13-015)
- Rogier B Mars
Wellcome Trust (202788/Z/16/Z)
- Karla L Miller
Medical Research Council, Alzheimer's UK and NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre
- Olaf Ansorge
Alfred Benzon's Foundation
- Mads F Bertelsen
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/N019814/1)
- Katherine L Bryant
Medical Research Council (MR/K02213X/1)
- Sean Foxley
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO, European Research Council (VIDI-452-16-015,ALW-179,ERC-COG 101001062)
- Prof. Martijn van den Heuvel,
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council , Medical Research Council (EP/L016052/1,MR/L009013/1)
- Amy FD Howard
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council , Medical Research Council (EP/L016052/1,MR/L009013/1)
- Istvan N Huszar
The Digital Brain Bank is supported by the Wellcome Trust (202788/Z/16/Z) and Medical Research Council (MRC, MR/K02213X/1). The Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging is supported by core funding from the Wellcome Trust (203139/Z/16/Z).The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: There are four new species datasets (Hamadryas baboon, Golden Lion tamarin, Cotton-Top tamarin, and European wolf) provided in the first release to the Digital Brain Bank which have not been previously described in literature. These datasets all used post-mortem tissue from animals which died of causes unrelated to research, and therefore do not require a Home Office license under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. Ethics statements associated with all remaining Digital Brain Bank datasets are described in the original manuscript associated with each dataset, as provided in Table 1.
Human subjects: All human post-mortem datasets described in the first release to the Digital Brain Bank used tissue provided by the Oxford Brain Bank, a research ethics committee (REC) approved, HTA regulated research tissue bank. The studies were conducted under the Oxford Brain Bank's generic Research Ethics Committee approval (15/SC/0639).
Copyright
© 2022, Tendler et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 3,242
- views
-
- 309
- downloads
-
- 31
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
The Digital Brain Bank, an open access platform for post-mortem datasets
eLife 11:e73153.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.73153
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
When observing others’ behaviors, we continuously integrate their movements with the corresponding sounds to enhance perception and develop adaptive responses. However, how the human brain integrates these complex audiovisual cues based on their natural temporal correspondence remains unclear. Using electroencephalogram (EEG), we demonstrated that rhythmic cortical activity tracked the hierarchical rhythmic structures in audiovisually congruent human walking movements and footstep sounds. Remarkably, the cortical tracking effects exhibit distinct multisensory integration modes at two temporal scales: an additive mode in a lower-order, narrower temporal integration window (step cycle) and a super-additive enhancement in a higher-order, broader temporal window (gait cycle). Furthermore, while neural responses at the lower-order timescale reflect a domain-general audiovisual integration process, cortical tracking at the higher-order timescale is exclusively engaged in the integration of biological motion cues. In addition, only this higher-order, domain-specific cortical tracking effect correlates with individuals’ autistic traits, highlighting its potential as a neural marker for autism spectrum disorder. These findings unveil the multifaceted mechanism whereby rhythmic cortical activity supports the multisensory integration of human motion, shedding light on how neural coding of hierarchical temporal structures orchestrates the processing of complex, natural stimuli across multiple timescales.
-
- Neuroscience
Early-life stress can have lifelong consequences, enhancing stress susceptibility and resulting in behavioural and cognitive deficits. While the effects of early-life stress on neuronal function have been well-described, we still know very little about the contribution of non-neuronal brain cells. Investigating the complex interactions between distinct brain cell types is critical to fully understand how cellular changes manifest as behavioural deficits following early-life stress. Here, using male and female mice we report that early-life stress induces anxiety-like behaviour and fear generalisation in an amygdala-dependent learning and memory task. These behavioural changes were associated with impaired synaptic plasticity, increased neural excitability, and astrocyte hypofunction. Genetic perturbation of amygdala astrocyte function by either reducing astrocyte calcium activity or reducing astrocyte network function was sufficient to replicate cellular, synaptic, and fear memory generalisation associated with early-life stress. Our data reveal a role of astrocytes in tuning emotionally salient memory and provide mechanistic links between early-life stress, astrocyte hypofunction, and behavioural deficits.
