A three-dimensional ruler method that can be used to identify and register brains in one space
In the 80s, two French doctors measured and analyzed the brain of a French lady who passed away at the age of 60. The kind lady, who apparently consented to her brain surgery, was (besides a fan of baguettes and chansons, apparently) also having a smaller than average brain.
But since she was chosen for the procedure, it was the circumference and size of her brain that influenced the measurements of various processes in the brain for the next decades, and even a certain degree of error
The doctors who did the autopsy were called Jean Talairach and Pierre Tournoux
And in 1988 they published their atlas, called:
Jean Talairach and Pierre Tournoux, Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain, Thieme Medical Publishers, New York, 1988.
What they actually did was develop a three-dimensional ruler method that could be used to identify and register brains in one space.
This is despite the fact that the human brain is different from person to person (just as we differ in height, weight, hair color, but usually keep the same characteristics in appearance - two eyes, two hands and 10 fingers).
The innovation in the method was that areas of the brain that could not be seen or identified would be characterized in relation to the location of other anatomical structures in the brain. In Taliaarch's method, the anterior commissure and posterior commissure (or for short, AC and PC, respectively) are the structures to which the atlas refers.
Talierach's method places maximum dimensions for the brain in three planes
X Y Z
On the X axis - the AC-PC line
A vertical line that passes between the anterior and posterior commissures
VCA line- verticofrontal line, or Y axis- a vertical line that passes through the anterior commissure
The Z axis - Midline - a line that forms the sagittal (middle) plane between the hemispheres
Sometimes AC is referred to as the "source" and sections are counted from it - for example, the frontal-frontal lobe is characterized by "AC + 13 mm" and the posterior, occipital region will be called AC - 35 mm", this is despite the fact that in Taliaarch's system one does not count forwards and backwards with positive and negative signs, but There is a division into quarters according to letters and numbers (a bit like a three-dimensional map, if you like)
The creation of the atlas that "normalizes" the brain in one space, made it possible to involve several brains in one space and to analyze the results of various imaging methods, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Positron Emission Tomography and other research methods on the brain, this by hypothesizing about "Taliarch space" which is accepted by all
A little more information and photos:
http://imaging.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/imaging/FindingCommissures
