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By Nick Heath, 13 October 2008 17:11

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Supercomputing is helping UK researchers to delve deeper into the workings of the human mind than ever before.

At the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (Cubric) researchers are pioneering advanced brain scanning techniques to learn how to combat conditions such as autism.

Cubric's 75 servers have slashed the time it takes to crunch through gigabytes of brain scan data, allowing scans that used to take days to be produced in minutes.

Research associate at the university, Alexander Leemans, uses Cubric's cluster to crunch through data from diffusion MRI scans and map how white matter fibres are connected in the brain, as seen here.

The colours in the scan reflect the diffusion of water molecules that in turn reveals the brain's complex fibre network.

Researchers at Cardiff are using the results to look for differences in the brains of people with autism.

Leemans said: "Now you can divide the time taken to calculate the voxels [3D pixels] in the scan by about 300, so it can be done in minutes or seconds."

Photo credit: Nick Heath/silicon.com