First draft of barrel atlas blog

docs/source/blog/barrel-atlas-added.md

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+---
+blogpost: true
+date: July 22, 2024
+author: Adam Tyson, Axel Bisi
+location: London, U.K.; Lausanne, Switzerland
+category: brainglobe
+language: English
+---
+
+# A mouse brain atlas with barrel field annotations has been added to BrainGlobe
+
+[Bolaños-Puchet et al., 2024](https://elifesciences.org/articles/80777) recently published annotations of the mouse
+[barrel cortex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_cortex) in the 
+[Allen Mouse Brain Common Coordinate Framework](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.007).
+The Allen Mouse Brain Atlas (and particularly it's Common Coordinate Framework) has been key to advances in 
+computational neuroanatomy in the adult mouse. However, this atlas does not contain any barrel cortex annotations.
+These annotations allow researchers to much more precisely localise regions of interest within specific barrels, 
+rather than barrel cortex as a whole. 
+
+
+<img src="./images/barrel_annotations.png" alt="barrel annotations" width="700"/>
+
+**Figure 1. Surface view of the barrel annotations.**
+
+
+EPFL PhD student Axel Bisi and the BrainGlobe team have now worked together to make the atlas available within the BrainGlobe ecosystem. 
+Two versions of the atlas are available, at 10μm (`allen_mouse_bluebrain_barrels_10um`) and 25μm resolution (`allen_mouse_bluebrain_barrels_25um`).
+
+## How do I use the new atlas?
+
+You can use the atlas like all other BrainGlobe atlases. To visualise the atlas in napari:
+* Install BrainGlobe ([instructions](/documentation/index))
+* Download the 25μm version of the atlas by running `brainglobe install -a allen_mouse_bluebrain_barrels_25um` in the terminal (make sure to activate your conda environment first)
+* Run `napari -w brainrender-napari` and visualise the different parts of the atlas as described in our [visualisation tutorial](/tutorials/visualise-atlas-napari)
+
+
+## Why are we adding new atlases?
+
+A key goal of BrainGlobe is to ensure that computational neuroanatomy software doesn't need to be rewritten for new 
+applications requiring novel atlases. We look forward to adding more atlases to BrainGlobe in the near future. 
+If you'd like to get involved with a similar project, please [get in touch](/contact).