Julich-Brain: A 3D probabilistic atlas of the human brain’s cytoarchitecture

Cytoarchitecture is a basic principle of microstructural brain parcellation. Here we introduce Julich-Brain, a 3D atlas containing cytoarchitectonic maps of cortical areas and subcortical nuclei. The atlas is probabilistic to consider variations between individual brains. Building such an atlas was highly data- and labor-intensive and required to develop nested, interdependent workflows for detecting borders between brain areas, data processing, provenance tracking, and flexible execution of processing chains to handle large amounts of data at different spatial scales. Gap maps complement cortical maps to achieve full cortical coverage. The atlas concept is dynamic, i.e., continuously adapted with progress in mapping, openly available to support neuroimaging studies of healthy subjects and patients, as well as modeling and simulation, and interoperable, to link with other atlases and recourses.