The big picture

One of the first things that struck me when I started to work on a demo for a film about the brain at the NFB was how little I knew about the brain, even though I had worked at the Montreal Neurological Institute for 3 years before. I wish I had taken more time to get the big picture. That's why I was very interested by what Stephen Larson from UC San Diego had to say.

Larson was here to introduce the Siggraph crowd to the world of brain image visualization during a session called "Biomedical Applications: what you need to know". He's interested in using visualization tools to help study the brain across all scales, something that is really difficult to do now. He is involved with the development of a program called "The Whole Brain Catalog" who's goal is to do exactly that. He's shown a particularly interesting video that they produced at UC San Diego to demonstrate the possibilities of the program.

Larson mentioned an interesting web resource called molecularmovies.org. The web site presents "an organized directory of cell and molecular animations, as well as a collection of original tutorials for life science professionals learning 3D visualization".

Some of my NFB colleagues might be interested in knowing that Larson used a map of the London subways system as a metaphor to illustrate interconnections in the brain. They might also be interested to know that Steve Larson's talk generated a huge interest here at the conference and that they might not have the only film about the brain in preparation.