Neuroanatomy

Project FIIND is an international effort to create the most detailed description of the development of the ferret brain. The first days after birth in ferrets provide a unique view of the development of a complex brain. Unlike mice, ferrets develop a rich pattern of deep neocortical folds and cortico-cortical connections. Unlike humans and other primates, whose brains are well differentiated and folded at birth, ferrets are born with a very immature and completely smooth neocortex: folds, neocortical regionalisation and cortico-cortical connectivity develop in ferrets during the first days after birth. After a period of fast neocortical expansion, during which brain volume increases by up to a factor of 4 in 2 weeks, the ferret brain reaches its adult volume at about 6 weeks of age.

The ferret: an exceptional animal model for neuroimaging

Ferrets appear as an exceptional animal model to investigate the neurobiological correlates of the phenomena observed in human neuroimaging. Many of these phenomena, such as the relationship between brain folding, cortico-cortical connectivity and neocortical regionalisation cannot be investigated in mice, but could be investigated in ferrets.

An open science project

We are constituting an open, collaborative atlas of ferret brain development, integrating multi-modal and multi-scale data. We are acquiring data from many animals, from newborns to adults, using high-resolution MRI, diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and high-throughput histology. Brains will be sectioned at 25 μm and scanned at 0.25 μm of resolution, and processed for real-time multi-scale visualisation. We are building a web-platform to integrate an interactive multi-scale visualisation of the data. Using our combined expertise in computational neuroanatomy, multi-modal neuroimaging, neuroinformatics, and the development of inter-species atlases, we are building an open-source web platform to allow the collaborative, online, creation of atlases of the development of the ferret brain. The web platform will allow researchers to access and visualise interactively the MRI and histology data. It will also allow researchers to create collaborative, human curated, 3D segmentations of brain structures, as well as vectorial atlases. Our work should provide a first integrated atlas of ferret brain development, and the basis for an open platform for the creation of collaborative multi-modal, multi-scale, multi-species atlases.

	Groupe de neuroanatomie appliquée et théorique, Institut Pasteur, France Roberto Toro (P.I.) is leader of the group of applied and theoretical neuroanatomy at the unit of human genetics and cognitive function, department of neuroscience of the Institut Pasteur. After a degree in engineering, he obtained a Master and a PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Paris 6, France. He is interested on the development and evolution of the brain, which he studies through mathematical modelling, magnetic resonance imaging and genomics.
	Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Paul Tiesinga is professor of Neuroinformatics and chair of the department of Neuroinformatics. He has a master in Theoretical Physics and a PhD in physics from Utrecht University. He was a postdoc in the physics department at Northeastern University and a Sloan postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute. He was associate professor in the Physics & Astronomy department at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Paul Tiesinga moved to the Radboud University Nijmegen in 2009 to establish the Neuroinformatics department. He has served as director of the Donders Centre for Neuroscience and is member of the Governing Board of the International Neuroinformatics Facility (INCF).
	MIRCen, Commisariat aux Énergies Alternatives, France Thierry Delzescaux has a PhD in image processing, and is researcher at the CEA. He specialises in preclinical research (experimental models), image processing in neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's), multimodal co-registration of in vivo (PET, MRI, CT) and post mortem (histology, autoradiography, immunohistochemistry) brain images, 3D reconstruction and image analysis of post mortem / ex vivo data, anatomo-functional studies in rodents and primates. Thierry Delzescaux is coordinator of the BrainRAT project (Brain Reconstruction and Analysis Toolbox) developed by the image processing team of the MIRCen and integrated into BrainVISA software.
	McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Quebec, Canada Alan Evans was originally trained in physics at Liverpool University in the U.K. After completing his PhD in biophysics he then spent 5-year at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. in Ottawa, working on the physics and biochemical analysis of positron emission tomography (PET) data. In 1984, he moved to the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) at McGill University in Montreal to continue his PET research. His research interests include multi-modal brain imaging with PET and MRI, image processing and large-scale brain database analysis. During his 25 years at the MNI, he has held numerous leadership roles, most notably as director of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre. Alan Evans is a founding member of the International Consortium for Brain Mapping and one of the founders of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, serving in numerous positions since 1995. In 2003 he received a prestigious Senior Scientist Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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