The recently developed "semantic atlas" of the human brain holds out the possibility of developing technologies to cure patients with Alzheimer's and other medical conditions that limit a person's ability to communicate effectively.

The atlas, which shows how the human brain organizes language, might also help persons unable to speak. Among these persons are victims of stroke (or brain attack) or those with motor neuron diseases.

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The semantic atlas allows scientists to track the brain activity of patients that have difficulty communicating. Scientists then match that data to "language maps" to determine what these people are trying to say.

The researchers believe the semantic map might be used to help better understand what people with Alzheimer's are thinking just by studying data from a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging or fMRI data. They believe the knowledge gained from the atlas could be used to create a "language decoder" to help people unable to speak to others.

Among other things, the atlas shows how one region of the brain activates in response to words. It shows words are stored in over 100 areas of the brain, spread across both the left and right hemispheres.

This finding was remarkable since it's widely known that it's the left hemisphere of the brain that processes language. The study by team at the University of California, Berkeley that mapped the atlas also found that the semantic system that processes the meaning of words is scattered across the outer layer of the human brain.

The results of fMRI scans of volunteer's brains were converted into a thesaurus-like map with the help of a computer algorithm. Also collected were data on changes in blood flow and oxygenation that indicate brain activity in different parts of the cerebral cortex. The map showed where the words were arranged on the left and right halves of the brain.

The semantic atlas study was published in the journal, Nature.

Tagssemantic atlas, Alzheimer's, University of California, Berkeley, fMRI, brain