Dr. Arthur W. Toga

The National Geographic article First Ever Brain “Atlas” Completed said

Scientists have made a complete “atlas” of the mouse brain, which they hope will spark a new era of insight into how the brain works and what happens when it breaks down.
 
The Allen Brain Atlas, launched with a hundred million U.S. dollars from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, provides an online, three-dimensional map showing where each of more than 21,000 genes is activated in the mouse brain.
 
“No one has ever done anything like this before,” Arthur Toga, a professor of neurology at the University of California at Los Angeles’s School of Medicine, told National Geographic News.
 
“It tells us not just what genes are there, but where they are,” added Toga, who is a member of the brain atlas’s scientific advisory panel.

Arthur W. Toga, Ph.D. is Professor, Department of Neurology, Director, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Department of Neurology, and Co-Director, Division of Brain Mapping, Neuropsychiatric Institute, all at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). His research is focused on neuroimaging, mapping brain structure and function, and brain atlasing. He also studies cerebral metabolism and neurovascular coupling. He was trained in neuroscience and computer science and has written more than 650 papers, chapters and abstracts, including eight books.
 
Recruited to UCLA in 1987, he formed and directs the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging. This 100-member laboratory includes graduate students from computer science, biostatistics and neuroscience. It houses one of the largest computing facilities of any University of California research laboratory, and is funded by National Institutes of Health grants as well as industry partners. He is Director of the Training Program in Neuroimaging, Co-Director of the Division of Brain Mapping and Founding Editor of the journal NeuroImage.
 
As Principal investigator and Director of LONI (Laboratory of Neuro-Imaging), Art has established a new research infrastructure, the Center for Computational Ecology. The Center provides a framework in which investigators from mathematical sciences, clinical research, and computational biology can openly communicate and exchange ideas for the purpose of developing new computational tools. Advances in the basic science area include introducing new non-linear algorithms for spatial normalization, feature extraction and data mining. Each of these algorithms is then implemented, tested and validated as software tools and applied in the field of computational neuroscience. The wide range of collaborative initiatives undertaken at the Laboratory of Neuro-Imaging (LONI) efficiently disseminates knowledge and tools to the community.
 
Art edited Brain Warping and Three Dimensional Neuroimaging, coedited Brain Mapping: The Systems, Brain Mapping: The Disorders, Brain Mapping: The Methods, Second Edition, and Brain Mapping: The Trilogy, 3 Volume Set, authored Neuroimage, and coauthored The Rhesus Monkey Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates, Genetic influences on brain structure, A surface-based technique for warping 3-dimensional images of the brain, In vivo evidence for post-adolescent brain maturation in frontal and striatal regions, and A Probabilistic Atlas of the Human Brain: Theory and Rationale for Its Development The International Consortium for Brain Mapping (ICBM).
 
Art earned his B.S. (Magna cum Laude) in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts in 1974, his M.S. (cum Laude) in Neurosciences at St. Louis University in 1976, and his Ph.D. (cum Laude) in Neurosciences at St. Louis University in 1978.