Mazziotta, John

John is Chair, Department of Neurology, Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, and Director, UCLA Brain Mapping Center. A world-renowned expert on imagery of the human brain, he leads a team of researchers from six countries in creating the world’s first comprehensive atlas of the structure and function of the normal adult human brain. Since beginning this work, John has published over 207 research papers, seven texts and has received numerous awards and honors for these efforts. “No two brains are the same,” says John. “Their shape. Their size. The way they are organized.” These differences between brains make it difficult to know what is normal and what is not — is a piece of tissue a doctor sees on a scan an aberration or just a normal variation? And for brain surgeons, who are unable to actually view the critical areas in a patient’s brain, the risk always exists that they may unwittingly slip into dangerous territory. The global team, which has thus far compiled hundreds of thousands of brain images from some 7,000 subjects, are further challenged by the fact the brain is a dynamic environment, always in flux. What’s more, brain functions are highly distributed. “You can’t just point to an area and say, ‘Here’s the seat of language,’ ” John says. “For example, the brain handles the challenge of thinking of and initiating a word, and of understanding that word, differently. Execution of these tasks involves complex circuitry throughout the brain.” With a goal of establishing the “average” brain, the researchers have determined that collecting a massive amount of data would be their best hope for approaching this moving target.