Scientists mapped the human brain like a city and revealed that we've been ignoring some of its most important parts

What training is your doctor going to be going to to be able to use this new map and update your stroke protocols? Or does your doctor just 'Wing it'? Is winging it good enough for you?
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Imagine that the first map you ever saw of the United States was simply a rough outline of the country's borders with only about half the state boundaries penciled in.

That's essentially the type of diagram that scientists have been using as a map of the human brain for more than 100 years.

Fortunately, that's about to change.

By combining data from a handful of imaging techniques, an international coalition of researchers has created one of the most precise maps of the human brain ever seen. The new map, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, divides the brain up into 180 unique brain regions, of which 97 have never been identified before. Take a look:

"This is something of a landmark in terms of mapping the brain that we are very excited to share with the world," David Van Essen, one of the paper's authors and the alumni endowed professor of neuroscience at the Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Missouri, told Business Insider.

To make it, the scientists combined over a century's worth of brain research, from 20th-century anatomical models based on dyed, paper-thin slices of cadaver brains, to modern MRI scans designed to show brain activity in live people.

It's incredibly cutting-edge; futuristic, even. But it's also grounded in a method of exploration that's been around for hundreds of years: Mapping.
Mapping the brain

Take a stroll outside your home, and you'll notice the terrain will change. Outside your door, your feet might touch wood or cement — your patio, perhaps. But take a few more steps and you're on grass. A few steps more and you reach the asphalt of a parking lot or the cement of a curb. Perhaps you reach a wall, a fence, or another physical border.

This approach is similar to the one that the researchers used to navigate the brain. Like curious hikers, they roamed the labyrinthian depths of the cortex and took detailed notes of what they saw. Every time they reached a spot where the terrain shifted, they marked it as a different part of the brain.

"We were looking for where parts of the map change — so for example, you'll see the architecture will change as you step over a border," Matthew Glasser, a co-author of the paper and a graduate student in Van Essens's lab at the University of Washington in St. Louis, told Business Insider.

Still, architectural differences can only tell us so much. Outdoors, a patch of grass might be a sign of a soccer field, for example, but it could also be a dog park. A brick wall might indicate a library, but it could also be the sign of a school. So, instead of relying on one feature or "modality" alone, the scientists combined numerous studies that looked at different features. MRI scans, for example, are used to measure brain activity while participants engage in a specific task, like reading or watching a movie, or while they are simply letting their minds wander.

Combining the data from all of these studies revealed 97 previously unidentified regions of the brain, which in the future scientists might study in-depth in order to look at the causes of specific illnesses or disease — and to try and come up with cures.
'An island unto itself'

Of all of the 97 new regions, or "fingerprints," that the scientists spotted for the first time, one area in particular stood out: A region called 55B, which is thought to play a key role in how we process language.