BrainInfo Tutorial

For up to date issues or problems with this database please see the wiki.
For more information, please visit BrainInfo.

BrainInfo is a web portal to information about human, macaque, rat and mouse neuroanatomy. It helps to identify structures in the brain and provides many different kinds of information about each structure.  

We begin by entering a brain region as a search term in NIF.  For this demonstration we will use Pulvinar Nucleus. 

Under the Data Federation tab, click Brain Regions and then BrainInfo.

Note, there are many names that have something to do with the pulvinar nucleus, but to determine how many different structures there are we recommend looking at the column labeled structure and the columns labeled concept type, species, language and publications.  From these columns, we can see that "Pulvinar Thalami" is the latin term for the Pulvinar structure, while Kissen is the German name for the same structure.  We recommend sorting by the Structure column to make this comparison simpler (see below). 

Clicking on the Name column, takes the user to a page with more information about the chosen structure. Here we choose Kissen, which of course takes us to the Pulvinar page. You can learn about What, Where and How big the structure is, What is written about it in PubMed, Other Names for it, Which Species Have it, and so on just by selecting on any of these links.

To see images of the chosen structure, simply click on the  “Where Is It?” link under Concept_ID. 

This will take you to a page within BrainInfo that displays many contributors (such as the Michigan Atlas, the Digital Anatomist, BrainMaps.org and the VanEssen Lab) versions of the STS, from humans and macaques.

If you wish to further your search on the topic of your inquiry, additional information is available at BrainInfo.

You can begin by clicking the BrainInfo button at the beginning or end of this tutorial. The page below will appear. 

Clicking ‘Search by Name’ enables the visitor to obtain information using any of 15,000 neuroanatomical acronyms and terms in English, Latin and five other languages.

Begin by entering a brain region as a search term.  We will continue with 'pulvinar nucleus'.

The submission of the term ‘pulvinar nucleus’ produces the list of terms below.

For a more in-depth look, please visit the complete tutorial.
For more information, please visit BrainInfo.