these images will really tease the brain Step inside my brain Want to walk around a brain, or across the surface of Mars? Welcome to CAVE2. PT2M56S http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/action/externalEmbeddedPlayer?id=d-2vogg 620 349 October 17, 2013 To the untrained eye, the web of coloured wires rising and falling en masse across the wall of 3D screens looks like someone has let loose with a can of silly string, photographed the resulting mess and then zoomed in on a colourful cluster. But to those in the know, this is a human brain. The high-resolution image which spreads across every panel of the 320-degree curved wall of screens has been taken by MRI, a scan which took over an hour to complete. And that's before being processed by a supercomputer. Colour-coded to indicate their purpose, the red tubes that rise and fall in parallel are the elongated nerve cells that travel laterally across the brain. The tangle of green ribbons, carrying the optical information from the eye to the visual cortex, travel from front to back. Blue wires, cascading like a frozen waterfall, connect the top parts of the brain with those at the bottom and onwards to the spinal cord. Pushing boundaries: Professor Paul Bonnington examines an image of Luxor on Monash University's $1.9 million room-sized facility known as Cave2. Together these cerebral spaghetti streets represent the elongated nerve cells that make up the brain's white matter: the connective circuitry of the brain. "When we say circuitry, we really mean it because they really are carrying electrical signals," said computational imaging scientist David Barnes as he stands, virtually speaking, in the middle of another person's brain. But this isn't the brain as we know it. It's been projected in such detail that even the world's top neuroscientists would see their organ of expertise with new eyes. "On a normal desktop computer this would look like little more than a ball of multi-coloured wool," Dr Barnes said. Making this perspective possible is the $1.9 million room-sized facility known as Cave2, which opens next month. Based at Monash University's Clayton campus, it's an interactive 2D or 3D laboratory where groups of up to 20 researchers can take virtual tours of anything: from flying over the dusty Mars landscape to a strolling through Egypt's Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III in Luxor. The virtual visits - made with 3D glasses instead of passports - can be so realistic Monash eResearch director Paul Bonnington warns of motion sickness as he uses a console to "land" near a Martian trench with valleys and crevices so deep, shadows are cast. The data used to generate the footage comes direct from NASA. Similarly the data from the brain scan comes from the University of Illinois at Chicago, inventors of the Cave2 technology. But depending on the researcher's task, data can come from anywhere - including the neighbouring Australian Synchrotron. The Cave2 virtual lab can be used for anything: from surgical planning and rehearsal to studying the structure of a virus. And while it might appear to be the ultimate computer game, the device - the most advanced of its kind in the world - is set to unlock the next frontiers in science. As technology has advanced, so has the volume and complexity of data collected. Being able to understand and visualise the information has proved a hurdle for researchers, who traditionally work with spreadsheets and 2D microscopes. "In order to make the next phase of scientific discovery we need new tools to replace the microscope and the telescope," Professor Bonnington said. This facility let us see things that we wouldn't otherwise see.