The British Neuroscience Association have launched an online resource to help design and support experiments using rats.

Ratlas, an atlas of the rat brain, was built by combining many images of the brain to produce an ‘average’ model, which is then labelled in detail to allow identification of different areas.

The database was developed by researchers at the University of Nottingham, UK, and Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology in Magdeburg, Germany, using Lister hooded rats, one of the most commonly used rat species.

Access to the atlas is free via the Brain and Neuroscience Advances journal, and aims to increase the accuracy and efficiency of experiments, while reducing animal numbers used for neuroscience research.