Indian scientists produce most detailed 3D atlas of the human brainstem | Hacker News Reader

Indian scientists produce most detailed 3D atlas of the human brainstem

bbc.com

219 pointsBaudouinVH22 comments

You can see the 3d atlas videos at the project website online - https://anchor.humanbrain.in/

+1 for indian public funded science being publicly available and feeling the need to justify their existence by explaining what they do to the public.

Other publications from the same place:

https://iitm.humanbrain.in/project.html

notably:

https://brainportal.humanbrain.in/publicview/index.html

I am sure this is great but it requires some depth in that field to appreciate this. I don’t understand if what they developed is a tech to do a live scan of any person or just a detailed map of one brain.

The article sometimes makes it sound like this is a diagnostic tool but am I wrong in thinking it's a reference constructed from a small number of individuals?

my understanding is that they took 3 specimens, aged 25 gestational weeks, 9 and 54 years old.. did “800 serial histological sections” and manually tagged them. But you can check out the information yourself here: https://anchor.humanbrain.in/

Correct...

"Anchor is not a diagnostic tool. Instead, its greatest value lies in the questions it could help answer."

and

"Users can zoom from the whole brainstem seen on MRI down to individual neurons while maintaining their precise spatial relationships."

Thats pretty cool. The diagnosis/evaluation is still in the hands of another entity (doctor/scientist/AI assistant). More samples (via end of life donations) would help understanding, early diagnosis, and hopefully/eventually cures.

Is this the Indian equivalent of Allen Brain institute?

> The researchers have made the atlas freely available online

fuck yes. finally someone not gatekeeping lifesaving technologies so they can make shit ton of money out of it.

I believe this is how most publicly funded research and some private research institutes work. This research was conducted by a public Indian university (IIT Madras). Which, by the way is literally more selective than IVY league universities

Doesnt matter how selective they are if the Budget of 1 MIT is $5 Billion while the budget of all 23 IIT is less than $1 Billion. There is a reason why so many Indian scientists move out of India.

I just thought it was a cool fact :)

I think it’s good for people outside of India (myself included) to know how competitive life is over there. Indian research institutes seem to be truly top notch and they deserve due respect. That was my reason to share.

I'm not sure what point you're making, but if anything, that makes this MORE impressive not less, if they can do great work with little resources.

This particular lab happens to be primarily privately funded, donations, grants, etc,. Most big ticket research at IITM like this one are industry-funded or donation-funded. The public funds cover all the usual stuff and I don't mean to understate it.

Oh, I could find just the founding statement of the project stating it was funded by the “Principal Scientific Advisor” of the government of India https://acr.iitm.ac.in/iitm_in_news/iit-madras-launches-sudh... did you find something different?

Edit: it seems you were right. Apparently they have received big donations from ex-alumni including the co-founder of infosys and the founder of Fairfax Financial Holdings. Pretty cool!

The article you linked to itself states;

The centre will power a large-scale multi-disciplinary effort to map human brains at cellular level. It is supported by Infosys co-founder and IIT Madras’ Distinguished Alumnus Kris Gopalakrishnan and his wife Sudha Gopalakrishnan. Since 2014, Gopalakrishnan has been involved in seeding research at the institute at the intersection of neuroscience and engineering.

Selectivity is just a numbers game, doesn't translate well in the way you're trying to present.

Me hiring a PA is literally more selective than that. Only one person can qualify.

I should have clarified that I was defining selectivity as the ratio between applicants and accepted candidates. Getting in this school requires someone to be among the top 250k takers of a specific exam (JEE main) typically, it’d be taken by around 1.5 million students. If one is among those 250k, one can choose to do the advanced test.. which in 2025 was cleared by 56 880 students .. from which, 18,188 students were admitted.

And yes, if you have more than .. 84 candidates, your process would be more selective. However, I think the fair comparison would be .. say .. the MIT?

On the same year, the MIT got 29,282 applications and admitted 1,324 students

So if you apply to the MIT you’re more than 3 times likelier to get accepted.

Not a fair comparison. IITs are a bottleneck given there aren't better (in terms of reputation and outcome) schools here. And plenty more apply simply because it's a rite of passage for every Indian kid. I'd guess less so for MIT given kids pre-reject themselves.

Speaking anecdotally, of course.

> So if you apply to the MIT you’re more than 3 times likelier to get accepted.

That's based on numbers only, not reach or desirability. It's like saying India must be the best place in the world to live because it has the largest population.

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