The mouse brain refers to the

brain A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a ve ...

Mus musculus Mus or MUS may refer to: Abbreviations * MUS, the NATO country code for Mauritius * MUS, the IATA airport code for Minami Torishima Airport * MUS, abbreviation for the Centre for Modern Urban Studies on Campus The Hague, Leiden University, Net ...

. Various

brain atlas A brain atlas is composed of serial sections along different anatomical planes of the healthy or diseased developing or adult animal or human brain where each relevant brain structure is assigned a number of coordinates to define its outline or vol ...

es exist.

For reasons of reproducibility, genetically characterized, stable strains like C57BL/6 were chosen to produce high-resolution images and databases. Well known online resources include: * Allen Brain Atlas * Mouse Brain Library
High resolution mouse brain atlas
*

BrainMaps BrainMaps is an NIH-funded interactive zoomable high-resolution digital brain atlas and virtual microscope that is based on more than 140 million megapixels (140 terabytes) of scanned images of serial sections of both primate and non-primate br ...

High-Resolution Brain Maps and Brain Atlases of ''Mus musculus''
Despite superficial differences, especially in size and weight, the mouse brain and its function can serve as a powerful

animal model An animal model (short for animal disease model) is a living, non-human, often genetic-engineered animal used during the research and investigation of human disease, for the purpose of better understanding the disease process without the risk of ha ...

for study of

human brain The human brain is the central organ (anatomy), organ of the human nervous system, and with the spinal cord makes up the central nervous system. The brain consists of the cerebrum, the brainstem and the cerebellum. It controls most of the act ...

diseases or

mental disorder A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitt ...

s (see e.g.

Reeler A reeler is a mouse mutant, so named because of its characteristic "reeling" gait. This is caused by the profound underdevelopment of the mouse's cerebellum, a segment of the brain responsible for locomotion. The mutation is autosomal and recess ...

, Chakragati mouse). This is because the genes responsible for building and operating both mouse and human brain are 90% identical. Transgenic mouse lines also allow neuroscientists to specifically target the labeling of certain cell types to probe the neural basis of fundamental processes.

Anatomy

The

cerebral cortex The cerebral cortex, also known as the cerebral mantle, is the outer layer of neural tissue of the cerebrum of the brain in humans and other mammals. The cerebral cortex mostly consists of the six-layered neocortex, with just 10% consistin ...

of a mouse has around 8–14 million

neuron A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. ...

s while in those humans there are more than 10–15 billion. The

olfactory bulb The olfactory bulb (Latin: ''bulbus olfactorius'') is a neural structure of the vertebrate forebrain involved in olfaction, the sense of smell. It sends olfactory information to be further processed in the amygdala, the orbitofrontal cortex ( ...

volume takes about 2% of the mouse brain by volume in contrast to about 0.01% of the human brain. File:201307 mouse brain1.png, Mouse brain, dorsal view File:201308 mouse brain2.png, Mouse brain, lateral view File:201311 mice brain slice.png, Mouse brain slices File:Mouse cingulate cortex neurons.jpg, Mouse cingulate cortex neurons

Development

* Mouse brain development timeline

References

{{reflist Mus (rodent) Brain Brain anatomy

Anatomy

Development

See also

References