Links for Keyword: Brain imaging

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Behind the scenes of a brain-mapping moon shot

Meredith Wadman Ron Kalil, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, didn’t expect to see his son among the 28,500 attendees at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans last October. And he wondered why Tom Kalil, deputy director for policy at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), was accompanied by Miyoung Chun, vice-president of science programmes at the Kavli Foundation in Oxnard, California. Tom Kalil told his father that the Kavli Foundation had wanted his help in bringing nanoscientists together behind an ambitious idea. Ron Kalil says he thought: “Why are you talking about it at a neuroscience meeting?” He understands now. These two people, neither of them a working scientist, had been quietly pushing into existence the Brain Activity Map (BAM), the largest and most ambitious effort in fundamental biology since the Human Genome Project — and one that would need advances in both nanoscience and neuroscience to achieve its goals. This is the kind of science — big and bold — that politicians like. President Barack Obama praised brain mapping in his State of the Union address on 12 February. Soon after, Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, which will be the lead agency on the project, talked up the idea in a television appearance. The Obama administration is expected to provide more details about the initiative this month, possibly in conjunction with the release of the federal 2014 budget request. But already, some scientists are wondering whether the project, a concept less than two years old and still evolving, can win new funding from Congress, or whether it would crowd out projects pitched by individual scientists. “Creative science is bottom-up, not top-down,” says Cori Bargmann, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University in New York. “Are we talking about central planning inside the Beltway?” © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Nervous System and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 17875 - Posted: 03.07.2013

Connecting the Neural Dots

By JOHN MARKOFF In setting the nation on a course to map the active human brain, President Obama may have picked a challenge even more daunting than ending the war in Afghanistan or finding common ground with his Republican opponents. In more than a century of scientific inquiry into the interwoven cells known as neurons that make up the brain, researchers acknowledge they are only beginning to scratch the surface of a scientific challenge that is certain to prove vastly more complicated than sequencing the human genome. The Obama administration is hoping to announce as soon as next month its intention to assemble the pieces — and, even more challenging, the financing — for a decade-long research project that will have the goal of building a comprehensive map of the brain’s activity. At present, scientists are a long way from doing so. Before they can even begin the process, they have to develop the tools to examine the brain. And before they develop tools that will work on humans, they must succeed in doing so in a number of simpler species — assuming that what they learn can even be applied to humans. Besides the technological and scientific challenges, there are a host of issues involving storing the information researchers gather, and ethical concerns about what can be done with the data. Also highly uncertain is whether the science will advance quickly enough to meet the time frames being considered for what is being called the Brain Activity Map project. Many neuroscientists are skeptical that a multiyear, multibillion dollar effort to unlock the brain’s mysteries will succeed.“I believe the scientific paradigm underlying this mapping project is, at best, out of date and at worst, simply wrong,” said Donald G. Stein, a neurologist at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. “The search for a road map of stable, neural pathways that can represent brain functions is futile.” © 2013 The New York Times Company

Big Neuroscience: Billions and Billions (Maybe) to Unravel Mysteries of the Brain

By Gary Stix The era of Big Neuroscience has arrived. In late January, The Human Brain Project—an attempt to create a computer simulation of the brain at every scale from the nano nano to the macro biotic—announced that it had successfully arranged a billion Euro funding package for a 10-year run. And then on Feb. 18, an article in The New York Times took the wraps off a plan to spend perhaps billions of dollars for an effort to record large collections of brain cells and figure out what exactly they are doing. Is this the Large Hadron Collider vs. the Superconducting Supercollider redux? Not yet. The billions for the Brain Activity Map, the U.S. project, are still a wish that has yet to be granted. But, despite as-always hazy government finances, brain researchers are thinking large as they never have before, and invoking the attendant rhetoric of moon shots, next-generation Human Genome Projects and the need for humankind to muster the requisite visionary zeal to tackle one of science’s “last frontiers.” Oy, spare me that last part. The challenges these projects have set for themselves, though, illustrate the challenge of going from today’s crude profiles of a biological machine of incomprehensible complexity to an accurate rendering of the goings-on of some 100 billion neurons woven together by a pulsating tapestry of 100 trillion electrical interconnections. © 2013 Scientific American

How researchers shaped the White House's brain-mapping initiative

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News BOSTON — The brain-mapping project that the Obama administration wants to facilitate isn't necessarily aimed at adding billions of dollars to the money already being spent on research, according to the scientists who inspired the idea. Instead, it's aimed at harnessing new technologies to uncover the secrets of neural function less expensively and more completely. "We can bring down the cost and increase the quality of the technology," said Harvard geneticist George Church, one of the researchers who proposed the Brain Activity Map Project last year. "We are trying to work with current funding [levels] to bring down the cost." The New York Times reported on Monday that the White House has embraced the idea of having the Office of Science and Technology Policy spearhead the project, with participation by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies. The federal initiative is to be unveiled as early as next month, the Times quoted its sources as saying. The roots of the project go back months if not years earlier: The goals of the BAM Project were outlined last June in a white paper appearing in the journal Neuron. The researchers proposed a 15-year international effort to map the functions of the brain's complex neural circuitry to an unprecedented degree — using traditional tools such as magnetic resonance imaging in combination with novel technologies such as nanosensors and wireless fiber-optic probes that can be implanted into the brain, and genetically engineered cells that can be linked up with brain cells to record their activity. © 2013 NBCNews.com

Scans reveal intricate brain wiring

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News, Boston Scientists are set to release the first batch of data from a project designed to create the first map of the human brain. The project could help shed light on why some people are naturally scientific, musical or artistic. Some of the first images were shown at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston. I found out how researchers are developing new brain imaging techniques for the project by having my own brain scanned. Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital are pushing brain imaging to its limit using a purpose built scanner. It is one of the most powerful scanners in the world. The scanner's magnets need 22MW of electricity - enough to power a nuclear submarine. The researchers invited me to have my brain scanned. I was asked if I wanted "the 10-minute job or the 45-minute 'full monty'" which would give one of the most detailed scans of the brain ever carried out. Only 50 such scans have ever been done. I went for the full monty. It was a pleasant experience enclosed in the scanner's vast twin magnets. Powerful and rapidly changing magnetic fields were looking to see tiny particles of water travelling along the larger nerve fibres. By following the droplets, the scientists in the adjoining cubicle are able to trace the major connections within my brain. Arcs of understanding The result was a 3D computer image that revealed the important pathways of my brain in vivid colour. One of the lead researchers, Professor Van Wedeen, gave me a guided tour of the inside of my head. BBC © 2013

Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain

By JOHN MARKOFF The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics. The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness. Scientists with the highest hopes for the project also see it as a way to develop the technology essential to understanding diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as to find new therapies for a variety of mental illnesses. Moreover, the project holds the potential of paving the way for advances in artificial intelligence. The project, which could ultimately cost billions of dollars, is expected to be part of the president’s budget proposal next month. And, four scientists and representatives of research institutions said they had participated in planning for what is being called the Brain Activity Map project. The details are not final, and it is not clear how much federal money would be proposed or approved for the project in a time of fiscal constraint or how far the research would be able to get without significant federal financing. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Brain Connections Contribute to Our Unique Personalities

By Breanna Draxler Brain differences between the 23 participants were quantified at each surface vertex. Values below the global mean are shown in cool colors while values above this average are shown in warm colors. Image courtesy of Sophia Mueller et al. Every person thinks and acts a little differently than the other 7 billion on the planet. Scientists now say that variations in brain connections account for much of this individuality, and they’ve narrowed it down to a few specific regions of the brain. This might help us better understand the evolution of the human brain as well as its development in individuals. Each human brain has a unique connectome—the network of neural pathways that tie all of its parts together. Like a fingerprint, every person’s connectome is unique. To find out where these individual connectomes differed the most, researchers used an MRI scanning technique to take cross-sectional pictures of 23 people’s brains at rest. Researchers found very little variation in the areas of the participants’ brains responsible for basic senses and motor skills. It’s a pretty straight shot from the finger to the part of the brain that registers touch, for example, or from the eye to the vision center. Thus we apparently all sense the world in more or less the same way. The real variety arose in the parts of the brain associated with personality, like the frontoparietal lobe. This multipurpose area in the brain curates sensory data into complex thoughts, feelings or actions and allows us to interpret the things we sense (i.e., we recognize a red, round object as an apple). Because there are many ways to get from sensation to reaction, and many different ways to react to what we sense, each individual’s brain blazes its own paths.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Nervous System and Behavior; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 17774 - Posted: 02.09.2013

N.F.L. Joins With G.E. in Effort to Detect Concussions

By JUDY BATTISTA NEW ORLEANS — The N.F.L., faced with increasing concern about the toll of concussions and confronted with litigation involving thousands of former players, is planning to form a partnership with General Electric to jump-start development of imaging technology that would detect concussions and encourage the creation of materials to better protect the brain. The four-year initiative, which is expected to begin in March with at least $50 million from the league and G.E., is the result of a late October conversation between Commissioner Roger Goodell and G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, a former offensive tackle at Dartmouth. When Goodell explained his idea of getting leading companies in innovation to join the N.F.L. to accelerate research, Immelt said he wanted to help. After years of insisting there was no link between head injuries sustained on the field and long-term cognitive impairment, the N.F.L. has altered rules, fined and suspended players who hit opponents in the head and contributed millions of dollars for the study of head injuries. “Is this their way of defending themselves with this cloud over the sport? I’d be lying if I told you it had nothing to do with it,” Kevin Guskiewicz, the founding director of the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center at the University of North Carolina, said of the initiative. Guskiewicz is a member of the league’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee and the chairman of a subcommittee focused on safety equipment and playing rules. He will work with the N.F.L. and G.E. to identify areas of focus. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Nervous System and Behavior; Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System; Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 17750 - Posted: 02.04.2013

Stimulating the Brain with Microscopic Magnets

By R. Douglas Fields Imagine if your biggest health problem could be solved with the flip of a switch. Deep-brain stimulation (DBS) offers such a dramatic recovery for a range of neurological illnesses, including Parkinson's disease, epilepsy and major depression. Yet the metal electrodes implanted in the brain are too bulky to tap into intricate neural circuitry with precision and corrode in contact with tissue, so their performance degrades over time. Now neurophysiologists have developed a method of DBS that avoids these problems by using microscopic magnets to stimulate neurons. In experiments published in June 2012 in Nature Communications, neurophysiologist John T. Gale of the Cleveland Clinic and his colleague Giorgio Bonmassar, a physicist at Harvard Medical School and an expert on brain imaging, tested whether micromagnets (which are half a millimeter in diameter) could induce neurons from rabbit retinas to fire. They found that when they electrically energized a micromagnet positioned next to a neuron, it fired. In contrast to the electric currents induced by DBS, which excite neurons in all directions, magnetic fields follow organized pathways from pole to pole, like the magnetic field that surrounds the earth. The researchers found that they could direct the stimulus precisely to individual neurons, and even to particular areas of a neuron, by orienting the magnetic coil appropriately. “That may help us avoid the side effects we see in DBS,” Gale says, referring to, for instance, the intense negative emotions that are sometimes accidentally triggered when DBS is used to relieve motor problems in Parkinson's. © 2013 Scientific American

What's Your Fish Thinking?

by Carrie Arnold Studying the links between brain and behavior may have just gotten easier. For the first time, neuroscientists have found a way to watch neurons fire in an independently moving animal. Though the study was done in fish, it may hold clues to how the human brain works. "This technique will really help us understand how we make sense of the world and why we behave the way we do," says Martin Meyer, a neuroscientist at King's College London who was not involved in the work. The study was carried out in zebrafish, a popular animal model because they're small and easy to breed. More important, zebrafish larvae are transparent, which gives scientists an advantage in identifying the neural circuits that make them tick. Yet, under a typical optical microscope, neurons that are active and firing look much the same as their quieter counterparts. To see what neurons are active and when, neuroscientists have therefore developed a variety of indicators and dyes. For example, when a neuron fires, it is flooded with calcium ions, which can cause some of the dyes to light up. Still, the approach has limitations. Traditionally, Meyer explains, researchers would immobilize the head or entire body of a zebrafish larvae so that they could get a clearer picture of what was happening inside the brain. Even so, it was difficult to interpret neural activity for just a few neurons and over a short period of time. Researchers needed a better way to study the zebrafish brain in real time. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Neural ‘connectomics’ game unveiled

Posted by Heidi Ledford Just in time for the holidays, a team of MIT and Max Planck researchers has released EyeWire: an online game that allows users to trace neural connections through the retina. In the proud tradition of Foldit and other ‘citizen science’ endeavours, EyeWire aims to harness the power of the people to map the projections of retinal cells called JAM-B cells. JAM-B cells respond specifically to upward motion (which appears downward to the retina, because it receives inverted images), and were the first retinal ganglion cells distinguished on the basis of a molecular marker — a protein called ‘Junctional Adhesion Molecule B’ (JAM-B). Does the downward trajectory of the JAM-B cell projections relate to their function? The scientists behind EyeWire hope to find out. EyeWire, launched 10 December, is spearheaded by MIT’s Sebastian Seung, best known for taking the concept of mapping neural connections and turning it into the surprisingly digestible and well-read popular science book Connectomics: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. Seung and his colleagues chart the retinal connectome by taking serial electron micrographs of thin slices of tissue. They then trace individual neural projections through each slice and stitch it all together again into a three dimensional image. Seung’s team could use all the help it can get: in a review of Seung’s book, Caltech neuroscientist Christoph Koch estimated that to map a cubic millimetre of brain would require a billion images and a million working-years of analysis time for a trained technician. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Does Neuroscience need a Newton?

By Scicurious This past weekend, I read an interesting piece in the New Yorker. It’s another one of the current rash of pieces that are warning us (rightly!) to beware of neuro-hype. It references another recent piece in the New York Times, which referenced those fighting back against things like “How Creativity Works” (correct answer: it’s very complicated and we don’t know), and the ever-present fMRI studies hyped in the news (I’ve been guilty of a few of those, though I try very hard to be skeptical). Both pieces referenced the excellent Neuroskeptic and Neurocritic (though sadly, the NYT didn’t give them the links they definitely deserve). And both pieces warned that neuroscience is more, and better than, the gee-whiz of “This is your brain on poker“. I particularly liked the New Yorker piece, for making clear the incredible complexity of the human brain. The brain, though, rarely works that way. Most of the interesting things that the brain does involve many different pieces of tissue working together. Saying that emotion is in the amygdala, or that decision-making is the prefrontal cortex, is at best a shorthand, and a misleading one at that. Different emotions, for example, rely on different combinations of neural substrates. The act of comprehending a sentence likely involves Broca’s area (the language-related spot on the left side of the brain that they may have told you about in college), but it also draws on the parts of the brain in the temporal lobe that analyze acoustic signals, and part of sensorimotor cortex and the basal ganglia become active as well. (In congenitally blind people, some of the visual cortex also plays a role.) It’s not one spot, it’s many, some of which may be less active but still vital, and what really matters is how vast networks of neural tissue work together. © 2012 Scientific American

Neuroscience Fiction

Posted by Gary Marcus In the early nineteen-nineties, David Poeppel, then a graduate student at M.I.T. (and a classmate of mine)—discovered an astonishing thing. He was studying the neurophysiological basis of speech perception, and a new technique had just come into vogue, called positron emission tomography (PET). About half a dozen PET studies of speech perception had been published, all in top journals, and David tried to synthesize them, essentially by comparing which parts of the brain were said to be active during the processing of speech in each of the studies. What he found, shockingly, was that there was virtually no agreement. Every new study had published with great fanfare, but collectively they were so inconsistent they seemed to add up to nothing. It was like six different witnesses describing a crime in six different ways. This was terrible news for neuroscience—if six studies led to six different answers, why should anybody believe anything that neuroscientists had to say? Much hand-wringing followed. Was it because PET, which involves injecting a radioactive tracer into the brain, was unreliable? Were the studies themselves somehow sloppy? Nobody seemed to know. And then, surprisingly, the field prospered. Brain imaging became more, not less, popular. The technique of PET was replaced with the more flexible technique of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allowed scientists to study people’s brains without the use of the risky radioactive tracers, and to conduct longer studies that collected more data and yielded more reliable results. Experimental methods gradually become more careful. As fMRI machines become more widely available, and methods became more standardized and refined, researchers finally started to find a degree of consensus between labs. © 2012 Condé Nast.

Neuroscience: Under Attack

By ALISSA QUART THIS fall, science writers have made sport of yet another instance of bad neuroscience. The culprit this time is Naomi Wolf; her new book, “Vagina,” has been roundly drubbed for misrepresenting the brain and neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin. Earlier in the year, Chris Mooney raised similar ire with the book “The Republican Brain,” which claims that Republicans are genetically different from — and, many readers deduced, lesser to — Democrats. “If Mooney’s argument sounds familiar to you, it should,” scoffed two science writers. “It’s called ‘eugenics,’ and it was based on the belief that some humans are genetically inferior.” Sharp words from disapproving science writers are but the tip of the hippocampus: today’s pop neuroscience, coarsened for mass audiences, is under a much larger attack. Meet the “neuro doubters.” The neuro doubter may like neuroscience but does not like what he or she considers its bastardization by glib, sometimes ill-informed, popularizers. A gaggle of energetic and amusing, mostly anonymous, neuroscience bloggers — including Neurocritic, Neuroskeptic, Neurobonkers and Mind Hacks — now regularly point out the lapses and folly contained in mainstream neuroscientific discourse. This group, for example, slammed a recent Newsweek article in which a neurosurgeon claimed to have discovered that “heaven is real” after his cortex “shut down.” Such journalism, these critics contend, is “shoddy,” nothing more than “simplified pop.” Additionally, publications from The Guardian to the New Statesman have published pieces blasting popular neuroscience-dependent writers like Jonah Lehrer and Malcolm Gladwell. The Oxford neuropsychologist Dorothy Bishop’s scolding lecture on the science of bad neuroscience was an online sensation last summer. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Brain scans of rappers shed light on creativity

Daniel Cressey Rappers making up rhymes on the fly while in a brain scanner have provided an insight into the creative process. Freestyle rapping — in which a performer improvises a song by stringing together unrehearsed lyrics — is a highly prized skill in hip hop. But instead of watching a performance in a club, Siyuan Liu and Allen Braun, neuroscientists at the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders in Bethesda, Maryland, and their colleagues had 12 rappers freestyle in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The artists also recited a set of memorized lyrics chosen by the researchers. By comparing the brain scans from rappers taken during freestyling to those taken during the rote recitation, they were able to see which areas of the brain are used during improvisation. The study is published today in Scientific Reports1. The results parallel previous imaging studies in which Braun and Charles Limb, a doctor and musician at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, looked at fMRI scans from jazz musicians2. Both sets of artists showed lower activity in part of their frontal lobes called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during improvisation, and increased activity in another area, called the medial prefrontal cortex. The areas that were found to be ‘deactivated’ are associated with regulating other brain functions. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry; Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Nervous System and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain; Chapter 2: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 17498 - Posted: 11.17.2012

Snapshots explore Einstein’s unusual brain

Mo Costandi Albert Einstein is considered to be one of the most intelligent people that ever lived, so researchers are naturally curious about what made his brain tick. Photographs taken shortly after his death, but never before analysed in detail, have now revealed that Einstein’s brain had several unusual features, providing tantalizing clues about the neural basis of his extraordinary mental abilities1. While doing Einstein's autopsy, the pathologist Thomas Harvey removed the physicist's brain and preserved it in formalin. He then took dozens of black and white photographs of it before it was cut up into 240 blocks. He then took tissue samples from each block, mounted them onto microscope slides and distributed the slides to some of the world’s best neuropathologists. The autopsy revealed that Einstein’s brain was smaller than average and subsequent analyses showed all the changes that normally occur with ageing. Nothing more was analysed, however. Harvey stored the brain fragments in a formalin-filled jar in a cider box kept under a beer cooler in his office. Decades later, several researchers asked Harvey for some samples, and noticed some unusual features when analysing them. A study done in 1985 showed that two parts of his brain contained an unusually large number of non-neuronal cells called glia for every neuron2. And one published more than a decade later showed that the parietal lobe lacks a furrow and a structure called the operculum3. The missing furrow may have enhanced the connections in this region, which is thought to be involved in visuo-spatial functions and mathematical skills such as arithmetic. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Nervous System and Behavior; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System; Chapter 14: Attention and Consciousness
Link ID: 17496 - Posted: 11.17.2012

Bluebrain: Noah Hutton's 10-Year Documentary about the Mission to Reverse Engineer the Human Brain [

By Noah Hutton and Ferris Jabr "Nothing quite like it exists yet, but we have begun building it," Henry Markram wrote in the June 2012 issue of Scientific American. He was referring to a "fantastic new scientific instrument"—a biologically realistic and detailed model of a working human brain hosted on supercomputers. Markram, who directs the Brain Mind Institute at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, has been working on the Blue Brain Project, more recently known as the Human Brain Project, since 2005. "A digital brain will be a resource for the entire scientific community: researchers will reserve time on it, as they do on the biggest telescopes, to conduct their experiments," Markram wrote in SA. "They will use it to test theories of how the human brain works in health and in disease. They will recruit it to help them develop not only new diagnostic tests for autism or schizophrenia but also new therapies for depression and Alzheimer's disease. The wiring plan for tens of trillions of neural circuits will inspire the design of brainlike computers and intelligent robots. In short, it will transform neuroscience, medicine and information technology." Markram has claimed, at various times, that he can complete this ambitious project within 10 years. His critics argue that his ultimate goal is unachievable because the human brain is too complex to simultaneously simulate at every level, from the molecule to the cortex. Say one wanted to build an exact replica of a large and intricate circuit board. One would first need to map every wire linking every component and then re-create these links. In the same way, making a model of the human brain requires knowing the trillions of connections between its neurons. A map of all the connections between neurons in a brain is called a connectome, and no such map exists for the human brain. In fact, the only organism with a complete connectome is the tiny nematode C. elegans, which has 302 neurons total. The human brain has more than 80 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections between those cells. © 2012 Scientific American

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Nervous System and Behavior; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 17472 - Posted: 11.10.2012

Brain region found that does absolutely nothing [satire]

Neuroscientists at the University of Ingberg have found a brain region that does absolutely nothing. Their research, presented at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting, showed that a small region of the cortex located near the posterior section of the cingulate gyrus responded to ‘not one of our 46 experimental manipulations’. Dr. Ahlquist was rather surprised at the finding. “During a pilot study we noticed that this small section of the cortex did not show differential activity in any of our manipulations. Out of curiosity, we wanted to see whether it actually did anything at all. Over the months that followed we tried every we knew, with over 20 different participants. IQ tests, memory tasks, flashing lights, talking, listening, imagining juggling, but there was no response. Nothing. We got more desperate, so we tried pictures of faces, TMS, pictures of cats, pictures of sex, pictures of violence and even sexy violence, but nothing happened! Not even a decrease. No connectivity to anywhere else, not even a voodoo correlation. 46 voxels of wasted space. I know dead salmons that are more responsive. It’s an evolutionary disgrace, that’s what it is.” Some neuroscientists are disappointed by the regions’ lack of response: ‘This is exactly the type of cortical behavior that leads to this popular science nonsense about using only 10% of our brain. Frankly, I am outraged by this lazy piece of brain. It’s the cortical equivalent of a spare tyre. If anyone wants to have it lobotomized, I am happy to break out the orbitoclast and help them out. That’ll teach it.”

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Nervous System and Behavior; Chapter 1: Biological Psychology: Scope and Outlook
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System; Chapter 1: An Introduction to Brain and Behavior
Link ID: 17464 - Posted: 11.07.2012

An enlightened idea

By Laura Sanders A genetic tweak makes it easier to see neurons at work in living, breathing animals. The method, described in the Oct. 18 Neuron, capitalizes on a property of a busy neuron: When the cell fires, calcium ions flood in. Using an altered version of the protein GFP that lights up when calcium is present in a mouse’s brain, neuroscientist Guoping Feng of MIT and colleagues could see smell-sensing neurons respond to an odor, and movement neurons light up during walking. Q. Chen et al. Imaging Neural Activity Using Thy1-GCaMP Transgenic Mice. Neuron. Vol. 76, October 18,2012, p. 297. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.07.011. [Go to] © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Will DNA Barcodes And A Sneaky Virus Change The Way Scientists Map The Brain?

By Ferris Jabr Scientists have mapped, charted, modeled and visualized the human brain in many different ways. They have marked the boundaries of the organ’s four major lobes: the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes. They have divvied up the cortex into more than 50 Broadmann areas—small regions characterized by particular cell types and specific cognitive functions, such as processing speech and recognizing faces. Researchers have tagged individual neurons with fluorescent proteins, transforming gray tissue into stunning brainbows, and followed water molecules as they move through the nervous system to trace ribbons of neural tissue linking one brain region to another. More recently, some scientists have championed the importance of connectomes—detailed wiring diagrams of all the connections between neurons in a given nervous system or brain. Thoroughly understanding the brain, proponents of connectomics argue, requires precise maps of its neural circuits. The standard way of making a connectome is serial electron microscopy—chopping up an animal’s brain into thin sheets, taking photos of all the resident neurons through an electron microscope and using those photos to painstakingly reconstruct the connections between neurons. In the 1970s biologist Sydney Brenner and his colleagues began using this technique to map the 302 neurons and 7,000 neural connections, or synapses, in the nervous system of a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans. It took them more than 12 years to finish the map. So far, C. elegans is the only animal with such a thorough connectome. Since mammalian brains contain millions or billions of neurons and billions or trillions of synapses, depending on the species, researchers are searching for faster and cheaper ways to create connectomes. At Harvard University, for example, Jeff Lichtman and his colleagues have constructed an Automatic Tape-Collecting Lathe Ultramicrotome (ATLUM)—a machine that speeds up the business of slicing up brain tissue into thin sheets with conveyor-belt efficiency. © 2012 Scientific American

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