The Allen Institute for Brain Science has launched the Allen Human Brain Atlas, a publicly available online atlas charting genes at work throughout the human brain.

The data provided in this initial data release represent the most extensive and detailed body of information about gene activity in the human brain to date, documenting which genes are expressed, or “turned on,” where.

The Allen Human Brain Atlas, available at http://www.brain-map.org, is a unique multi-modal atlas of the human brain that integrates anatomic and genomic information to create a searchable, three-dimensional map of gene activity in the brain. Data modalities in this resource include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and histology—providing information about gross neuroanatomy, pathways of neural connections, and microscopic anatomy, respectively—as well as gene expression data derived from multiple approaches.