Given the wide variations in brain anatomy even among healthy subjects, consortia such as the ICBM developed a range of “average” anatomical templates based on MRI scans of hundreds of healthy subjects. Analysis software for brain images disseminated these average brain templates, and provided methods to relate new data to previously compiled atlases and data collections. This led to the notion of statistical representations of imaging signals in standardized coordinate spaces—or “statistical parametric maps”. The wide adoption of these standard spaces—such as the ICBM or MNI (Montreal Neurological Institute) spaces—was eased by the development of automated registration and alignment methods (Woods et al. 1993; Collins et al. 1994; Ashburner et al. 1999; Jenkinson et al. 2002) that allowed researchers to rapidly align their own data to the templates. This effort led to the rise of voxel-based morphometric approaches and statistical mapping approaches in general. These developments also allowed any group to compare and contrast their findings with ongoing findings from other groups around the world—a movement that was stimulated by the development of the Talairach and Tournoux brain atlases, which
