Coming Soon An ‘Indian Brain Template’

Scientists have long argued that human brain show significant variation in different racial types, but does it also vary from region to region in the same country? A team of neuroscientists at Haryana’s National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) are trying to find to prepare a one-of-its-kind Indian Brain Template (IBT).

At NBRC, a group of scientists are going to construct a prototype of the Indian brain from at least 150 brain scans of Indians from different regions from India, including women, reported The Hindu. These will be Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of one person from each state and union territory in India.

“There are variations in the size, volume and location of certain brain regions in Indian populations compared to, say, the Canadians,” Pravat Mandal, scientist leading the NBRC team told the paper.

This new archetype will guide researchers into further knowledge about human brains, as previous reach is mostly done on Caucasian Indians, the paper added.

Scientists have been pointing towards the fact that brain images across different regions show significant variations in the location of key brain regions and the density of neurons in various brain areas. China, South Korea and Canada too have their brain templates. China’s template is based on 1000 participant’s scans and Canada’s on 300.

National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) had also tried to embark on this mission but failed due to logistical constraints. The incomplete research had scan of 17 men and 10 women which showed that Indian brains “significantly differed in length and width, but not in their height, from Caucasian brains, according to a 2016 report in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a peer-reviewed journal. Not meaning they are lesser in intelligence,” the lead researcher of NIMHANS told the paper.

But Dr Mandal says he’s not sure about this finding and his idea to look at the quantity of a molecule called glutathione which is found at the back of the brain and an antioxidant known to help repair cell damage. The glutathione may be helpful in predicting something about Alzheimer’s disease. The concentration may vary as we age.

The research is funded by Department of Science and Technology.