The Allen Brain Atlas as a Resource for Teaching Undergraduate Neuroscience

The open science movement has resulted in a growing field of data- and tool-sharing platforms that serve as a resource not only for sharing data and results in the field of brain science but has allowed students and researchers to learn neuroscientific skills and concepts. For over a decade, the Allen Institute for Brain Science has been meticulously collecting high quality data mapping gene expression, connectivity and, more recently, functional data from the brains of mice, macaques and humans. These open data have been paired with unique navigation and visualization tools such that the neuroscience researcher can explore, utilize and even incorporate these data into their publications. The tools created to explore and analyze the Allen Brain Atlas datasets have also been widely utilized to teach neuroscientific concepts to undergraduate and graduate students. This article aims to outline how to use the Allen Brain Atlas resources as teaching tools to impart neuroanatomic concepts to undergraduate and graduate neuroscience students.