Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience Systems Neuroscience

Abstract

et al., 2006) and the Iterative Shape Averaging (ISA) procedure developed to generate the honeybee standard brain (Rohlfi ng et al., 2001; Brandt et al., 2005). This study concluded that the VIB procedure using a global and a local rigid transformation followed by a local nonrigid transformation preserves anatomical variability, whereas the ISA procedure using an affi ne transformation followed by iterative nonrigid registrations reduces the variability. The digital brain atlases of these four insects are based on common neuropil substrates like the protocerebrum including the optic lobes, the central body and the mushroom bodies, the deutocerebrum with the antennal lobes, and the tritocerebrum. Additional structures included in two or three of the atlases are the protocerebral bridge, anterior optic tubercles, lateral horns and the suboesophageal ganglion, the latter fused with the brain in the fl y, the honeybee and the moth. These structures are involved in visual, olfactory and gustatory information processing as well as associative learning and memory formation. They are linked by neurons mediating information from one structure to the next where the information is further processed, thus forming networks within and between the different brain structures. In order to