Bob McDonald · CBC Radio Technology used to determine the structure of the Earth's interior using seismic waves has been adapted into a prototype brain scanner that could give results in real time. It could also be cheaper and simpler to use than technologies like MRI or CT scans. For decades, geologists have used sound waves travelling through the Earth, either from earthquakes or artificial sources, to search for oil, image fault lines and attempt to predict earthquakes. Reading reflections and refraction of the waves as they pass through different kinds of rocks and deposits can help geologists essentially do an ultrasound to build up a picture of the Earth. But in recent years seismology has been supercharged by a computational technique called full waveform inversion (FWI), which uses complex computer algorithms to scavenge ever more information from seismic data, and make much more detailed and accurate 3D maps of the Earth's crust. Now scientists at Imperial College London have adapted the same technology into a prototype head-mounted scanner that produced imaging information they say could be used in the future to produce high-resolution 3D images of the brain. The wavefield is shown as it propagates across the head. (Dr Lluís Guasch / Imperial College London / University College London / Nature Digital Medicine) The device uses a helmet fitted with an array of acoustic transducers that act as both sound transmitters and receivers. The system uses low frequency sound waves that are able to penetrate the skull and pass through the brain without harming brain tissue. The sound waves are altered as they pass through different brain structures, then the signals are read and run through the FWI algorithm. In simulations the team got results that make them confident they can produce high-resolution 3D images that may be as good, if not better, than more traditional approaches. ©2020 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 27122 - Posted: 03.16.2020

By R. Douglas Fields Our concepts of how the two and a half pounds of flabby flesh between our ears accomplish learning date to Ivan Pavlov’s classic experiments, where he found that dogs could learn to salivate at the sound of a bell. In 1949 psychologist Donald Hebb adapted Pavlov’s “associative learning rule” to explain how brain cells might acquire knowledge. Hebb proposed that when two neurons fire together, sending off impulses simultaneously, the connections between them—the synapses—grow stronger. When this happens, learning has taken place. In the dogs’ case, it would mean the brain now knows that the sound of a bell is followed immediately by the presence of food. This idea gave rise to an oft-quoted axiom: “Synapses that fire together wire together.” The theory proved sound, and the molecular details of how synapses change during learning have been described in detail. But not everything we remember results from reward or punishment, and in fact, most experiences are forgotten. Even when synapses do fire together, they sometimes do not wire together. What we retain depends on our emotional response to an experience, how novel it is, where and when the event occurred, our level of attention and motivation during the event, and we process these thoughts and feelings while asleep. A narrow focus on the synapse has given us a mere stick-figure conception of how learning and the memories it engenders work. It turns out that strengthening a synapse cannot produce a memory on its own, except for the most elementary reflexes in simple circuits. Vast changes throughout the expanse of the brain are necessary to create a coherent memory. Whether you are recalling last night’s conversation with dinner guests or using an acquired skill such as riding a bike, the activity of millions of neurons in many different regions of your brain must become linked to produce a coherent memory that interweaves emotions, sights, sounds, smells, event sequences and other stored experiences. Because learning encompasses so many elements of our experiences, it must incorporate different cellular mechanisms beyond the changes that occur in synapses. This recognition has led to a search for new ways to understand how information is transmitted, processed and stored in the brain to bring about learning. In the past 10 years neuroscientists have come to realize that the iconic “gray matter” that makes up the brain’s outer surface—familiar from graphic illustrations found everywhere, from textbooks to children’s cartoons—is not the only part of the organ involved in the inscription of a permanent record of facts and events for later recall and replay. It turns out that areas below the deeply folded, gray-colored surface also play a pivotal role in learning. © 2020 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Glia
Link ID: 27114 - Posted: 03.12.2020

Ashley Yeager Genes that code for the structure and function of brain regions essential for learning, memory, and decision-making are beginning to be revealed, according to a report published last October in Nature Genetics. Analyzing MRI scans and blood samples from more than 38,000 individuals, as well as gene expression, methylation, and neuropathology of hundreds of postmortem brains, an international team of researchers identified 199 genes that affect the development of the brain, the connections and communication among nerve cells, and susceptibility to neurological disorders. New tools for studying neural tissue, such as RNA sequencing, have spurred a “very strong revival in studying human postmortem brains,” says Sabina Berretta, director of the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean Hospital in Boston. The Nature Genetics study and others like it have the potential to answer many questions about how the healthy brain functions, but they highlight one of the major challenges neuroscientists face right now—limited access to donated brain tissue, specifically from individuals unaffected by neurological disorders. While the Nature Genetics study included massive amounts of data from scans and blood, the researchers had gene expression data from only 508 postmortem brains. “We are really fortunate to get donations from people with a very large variety of dementias and other neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease,” Berretta says. “But we get very few donations from people that suffer from psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, and anxiety, and [even fewer from] unaffected donors.” As a result, brain banks are reaching out to religious groups and also scientific communities not tied to any particular neurological condition to increase donations of healthy brains. © 1986–2020 The Scientist.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 27075 - Posted: 02.27.2020

Diana Kwon In the 16th century, when the study of human anatomy was still in its infancy, curious onlookers would gather in anatomical theaters to catch of a glimpse of public dissections of the dead. In the years since, scientists have carefully mapped the viscera, bones, muscles, nerves, and many other components of our bodies, such that a human corpse no longer holds that same sense of mystery that used to draw crowds. New discoveries in gross anatomy—the study of bodily structures at the macroscopic level—are now rare, and their significance is often overblown, says Paul Neumann, a professor who specializes in the history of medicine and anatomical nomenclature at Dalhousie University. “The important discoveries about anatomy, I think, are now coming from studies of tissues and cells.” Over the last decade, there have been a handful of discoveries that have helped overturn previous assumptions and revealed new insights into our anatomy. “What’s really interesting and exciting about almost all of the new studies is the illustration of the power of new [microscopy and imaging] technologies to give deeper insight,” says Tom Gillingwater, a professor of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. “I would guess that many of these discoveries are the start, rather than the end, of a developing view of the human body.” © 1986–2020 The Scientist

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 27058 - Posted: 02.20.2020

Nicola Davis Parents should not worry about their teenagers’ delinquent behaviour provided they were well behaved in their earlier childhood, according to researchers behind a study that suggests those who offend throughout their life showed antisocial behaviour from a young age and have a markedly different brain structure as adults. According to figures from the Ministry of Justice, 24% of males in England and Wales aged 10–52 in 2006 had a conviction, compared with 6% of females. Previous work has shown that crime rises in adolescence and young adulthood but that most perpetrators go on to become law-abiding adults, with only a minority – under 10% of the general population – continuing to offend throughout their life. Such trends underpin many modern criminal justice strategies, including in the UK where police can use their discretion as to whether to a young offender should enter the formal justice system. Now researchers say they have found that adults with a long history of offences show striking differences in brain structure compared with those who have stuck to the straight and narrow or who transgressed only as adolescents. “These findings underscore prior research that really highlights that there are different types of young offenders – they are not all the same. They should not all be treated the same,” said Prof Essi Viding, a co-author of the study from University College London. Prof Terrie Moffitt, another co-author of the research from Duke University in North Carolina, said the study helped to shed light on what may be behind persistent antisocial behaviour. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Aggression; Brain imaging
Link ID: 27048 - Posted: 02.18.2020

Blake Richards Despite billions of dollars spent and decades of research, computation in the human brain remains largely a mystery. Meanwhile, we have made great strides in the development of artificial neural networks, which are designed to loosely mimic how brains compute. We have learned a lot about the nature of neural computation from these artificial brains and it’s time to take what we’ve learned and apply it back to the biological ones. Neurological diseases are on the rise worldwide, making a better understanding of computation in the brain a pressing problem. Given the ability of modern artificial neural networks to solve complex problems, a framework for neuroscience guided by machine learning insights may unlock valuable secrets about our own brains and how they can malfunction. Our thoughts and behaviours are generated by computations that take place in our brains. To effectively treat neurological disorders that alter our thoughts and behaviours, like schizophrenia or depression, we likely have to understand how the computations in the brain go wrong. However, understanding neural computation has proven to be an immensely difficult challenge. When neuroscientists record activity in the brain, it is often indecipherable. In a paper published in Nature Neuroscience, my co-authors and I argue that the lessons we have learned from artificial neural networks can guide us down the right path of understanding the brain as a computational system rather than as a collection of indecipherable cells. © 2010–2020, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging; Robotics
Link ID: 27042 - Posted: 02.14.2020

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News, Seattle US researchers are developing a better understanding of the human brain by studying tissue left over from surgery. They say that their research is more likely to lead to new treatments than studies based on mouse and rat models. Dr Ed Lein, who leads the initiative at the Allen Institute has set up a scheme with local doctors to study left over tissue just hours after surgery. He gave details at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle. "It is a little bit crazy that we have such a huge field where we are trying to solve brain diseases and there is very little understanding of the human brain itself," said Dr Lein. "The field as a whole is largely assuming that the human brain is similar to those of animal models without ever testing that view. "But the mouse brain is a thousand times smaller, and any time people look, they find significant differences." Dr Lein and his colleagues at the Allen Institute in Seattle set up the scheme with local neurosurgeons to study brain tissue just hours after surgery - with the consent of the patient. It functions as if it is still inside the brain for up to 48 hours after it has been removed. So Dr Lein and his colleagues have to drop everything and often have to work through the night once they hear that brain tissue has become available. © 2020 BBC

Keyword: Brain imaging; Epilepsy
Link ID: 27040 - Posted: 02.14.2020

By Veronique Greenwood When you look at a reconstruction of the skull and brain of Neoepiblema acreensis, an extinct rodent, it’s hard to shake the feeling that something’s not quite right. Huddled at the back of the cavernous skull, the brain of the South American giant rodent looks really, really small. By some estimates, it was around three to five times smaller than scientists would expect from the animal’s estimated body weight of about 180 pounds, and from comparisons to modern rodents. In fact, 10 million years ago the animal may have been running around with a brain weighing half as much as a mandarin orange, according to a paper published Wednesday in Biology Letters. The glory days of rodents, in terms of the animals’ size, were quite a long time ago, said Leonardo Kerber, a paleontologist at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria in Brazil and an author of the new study. Today rodents are generally dainty, with the exception of larger creatures like the capybara that can weigh as much as 150 pounds. But when it comes to relative brain size, N. acreensis, represented in this study by a fossil skull unearthed in the 1990s in the Brazilian Amazon, seems to be an extreme. The researchers used an equation that relates the body and brain weight of modern South American rodents to get a ballpark estimate for N. acreensis, then compared that with the brain weight implied by the volume of the cavity in the skull. The first method predicted a brain weighing about 4 ounces, but the volume suggested a dinky 1.7 ounces. Other calculations, used to compare the expected ratio of the rodent’s brain and body size with the actual fossil, suggested that N. acreensis’ brain was three to five times smaller than one would expect. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution; Brain imaging
Link ID: 27035 - Posted: 02.13.2020

By Kelly Servick Since its launch in 2013, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative has doled out about $1.3 billion in grants to develop tools that map and manipulate the brain. Until now, it has operated with no formal director. But last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which manages the initiative and is a key funder, announced that neurobiologist John Ngai would take the helm starting in March. Ngai, whose lab at the University of California, Berkeley, focuses on the neural underpinnings of the sense of smell, has helped lead BRAIN-funded efforts to classify the brain’s dizzying array of cell types with RNA sequencing. Ngai told ScienceInsider about how the initiative is evolving and how he hopes to influence it. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Q: Why is the BRAIN Initiative getting a director now? A: The initiative has been run day to day by a terrific team of senior program directors and staff with oversight from the 10 NIH institutes and centers that are involved in BRAIN. Walter Koroshetz [director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke] and Josh Gordon [director of the National Institute of Mental Health] have been overseeing the activities of BRAIN … kind of in addition to their “day jobs.” I think as enterprises emerge from their startup phase, which is typically the first 5 years, the question is how do you translate this into a sustainable enterprise, and yet maintain this cutting-edge innovation? … How do we leverage all the accomplishments that have been made, not just within BRAIN, but in molecular biology, in engineering, in chemistry and computer science, in data science. The initiative really will benefit from somebody thinking about this 24/7. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Brain imaging; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 27020 - Posted: 02.05.2020

Timothy Bella The headaches had become so splitting for Gerardo Moctezuma that the pain caused him to vomit violently. The drowsiness that came with it had intensified for months. But it wasn’t until Moctezuma, 40, fainted without explanation at a soccer match in Central Texas last year that he decided to figure out what was going on. When Jordan Amadio looked down at his MRI results, the neurosurgeon recognized — but almost couldn’t believe — what looked to be lodged in Moctezuma’s brain. As he opened up Moctezuma’s skull during an emergency surgery in May 2019, he was able to confirm what it was that had uncomfortably set up shop next to the man’s brain stem: a tapeworm measuring about an inch-and-a-half. “It’s very intense, very strong, because it made me sweat too, sweat from the pain,” Moctezuma said to KXAN. The clear and white parasite came from tapeworm larva that Amadio believes Moctezuma, who moved from Mexico to the U.S. 14 years before his diagnosis, might have had in his brain for more than a decade undetected. His neurological symptoms had intensified due to his neurocysticercosis, which was the direct result of the tapeworm living in his brain. The cyst would trigger hydrocephalus, an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid that increased pressure to the skull to the point that the blockage and pain had become life-threatening. “It’s a remarkable case where a patient came in and, if he had not been treated urgently, he would have died from tremendous pressure in the brain,” Amadio, attending neurosurgeon at the Ascension Seton Brain and Spine Institute in Austin, told The Washington Post on Thursday night.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 27013 - Posted: 02.01.2020

Abby Olena Understanding the array of neural signals that occur as an organism makes a decision is a challenge. To tackle it, the authors of a study published last week (January 16) in Cell imaged large swaths of the larval zebrafish brain as the animals decided which way to move their tails to avoid an undesirable situation. Finding patterns in the data, they were then able to use imaging to predict—10 seconds in advance—the timing and direction of the fish’s movement. “In a lot of other model systems it’s really difficult to actually . . . record something that’s happening throughout the whole brain with a high level of precision,” says Kristen Severi, a biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study. “When you have something like a larval zebrafish where you have access to the entire brain with single-cell resolution in a transparent vertebrate, it’s a great place to start to try to look for activity patterns that might be distributed and might be hard to connect.” Even if an animal has learned to do something, it doesn’t execute the exact same motor responses every time, says biophysicist Alipasha Vaziri of the Rockefeller University. He adds that common approaches to studying the neural basis of decision-making may not tell the whole story. For instance, monitoring a handful of neurons and then extrapolating from their activity what’s happening brain-wide means that researchers might miss the big picture. Likewise, recording across the whole brain and then averaging results across trials risks losing details essential to understanding how the brain encodes this behavior. © 1986–2020 The Scientist

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26990 - Posted: 01.24.2020

Janelia and Google scientists have constructed the most complete map of the fly brain ever created, pinpointing millions of connections between 25,000 neurons. Now, a wiring diagram of the entire brain is within reach. In a darkened room in Ashburn, Virginia, rows of scientists sit at computer screens displaying vivid 3-D shapes. With a click of a mouse, they spin each shape to examine it from all sides. The scientists are working inside a concrete building at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus, just off a street called Helix Drive. But their minds are somewhere else entirely – inside the brain of a fly. Each shape on the scientists’ screens represents part of a fruit fly neuron. These researchers and others at Janelia are tackling a goal that once seemed out of reach: outlining each of the fly brain’s roughly 100,000 neurons and pinpointing the millions of places they connect. Such a wiring diagram, or connectome, reveals the complete circuitry of different brain areas and how they're linked. The work could help unlock networks involved in memory formation, for example, or neural pathways that underlie movements. Gerry Rubin, vice president of HHMI and executive director of Janelia, has championed this project for more than a decade. It’s a necessary step in understanding how the brain works, he says. When the project began, Rubin estimated that with available methods, tracing the connections between every fly neuron by hand would take 250 people working for two decades – what he refers to as “a 5,000 person-year problem.”

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26984 - Posted: 01.23.2020

Nicola Davis When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, the damage wreaked in nearby towns was catastrophic. Now it appears the heat was so immense it turned one victim’s brain to glass – thought to be the first time this has been seen. Experts say they have discovered that splatters of a shiny, solid black material found inside the skull of a victim at Herculaneum appear to be the remains of human brain tissue transformed by heat. They say the find is remarkable since brain tissue is rarely preserved at all due to decomposition, and where it is found it has typically turned to soap. “To date, vitrified remains of the brain have never been found,” said Dr Pier Paolo Petrone, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Naples Federico II and a co-author of the study. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Petrone and colleagues reveal that the glassy brains belonged to a man of about 25 who was found in the 1960s lying face-down on a wooden bed under a pile of volcanic ash – a pose that suggests he was asleep when disaster struck the town. The bed was in a small room that was part of the Collegium Augustalium, a building relating to an imperial cult that worshipped the former emperor Augustus. The victim, according to Petrone, is believed to have been the caretaker. Petrone said it was when he recently focused his research on human remains found at the college that he noticed the black fragments in the caretaker’s skull. “I noticed something shining inside the head ,” he told the Guardian. “This material was preserved exclusively in the victim’s skull, thus it had to be the vitrified remains of the brain. But it had to be proved beyond any reasonable doubt.” © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26982 - Posted: 01.23.2020

By Kelly Servick The dark, thumping cavern of an MRI scanner can be a lonely place. How can scientists interested in the neural activity underlying social interactions capture an engaged, conversing brain while its owner is so isolated? Two research teams are advancing a curious solution: squeezing two people into one scanner. One such MRI setup is under development with new funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and another has undergone initial testing described in a preprint last month. These designs have yet to prove that their scientific payoff justifies their cost and complexity, plus the requirement that two people endure a constricted almost-hug, in some cases for 1 hour or more. But the two groups hope to open up new ways to study how brains exchange subtle social and emotional cues bound up in facial expressions, eye contact, and physical touch. The tool could “greatly expand the range of investigations possible,” says Winrich Freiwald, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University. “This is really exciting.” Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures blood oxygenation to estimate neural activity, is already a common tool for studying social processes. But compared with real social interaction, these experiments are “reduced and artificial,” says Lauri Nummenmaa, a neuroscientist at the University of Turku in Finland. Participants often look at static photos of faces or listen to recordings of speech while lying in a scanner. But photos can’t show the subtle flow of emotions across people’s faces, and recordings don’t allow the give and take of real conversation. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26949 - Posted: 01.10.2020

By Rodrigo Pérez Ortega Nearly 2600 years ago, a man was beheaded near modern-day York, U.K.—for what reasons, we still don’t know—and his head was quickly buried in the clay-rich mud. When researchers found his skull in 2008, they were startled to find that his brain tissue, which normally rots rapidly after death, had survived for millennia—even maintaining features such as folds and grooves (above). Now, researchers think they know why. Using several molecular techniques to examine the remaining tissue, the researchers figured out that two structural proteins—which act as the “skeletons” of neurons and astrocytes—were more tightly packed in the ancient brain. In a yearlong experiment, they found that these aggregated proteins were also more stable than those in modern-day brains. In fact, the ancient protein clumps may have helped preserve the structure of the soft tissue for ages, the researchers report today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Aggregated proteins are a hallmark of aging and brain diseases like Alzheimer’s. But the team didn’t find any protein clumps typical of those conditions in the ancient brain. The scientists still aren’t sure what made the proteins aggregate, but they suspect it could have something to do with the burial conditions, which appeared to take place as part of a ritual. In the meantime, the new findings could help researchers gather information from proteins of other ancient tissues from which DNA cannot be easily recovered. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Brain imaging; Glia
Link ID: 26941 - Posted: 01.09.2020

Nicola Davis and Hannah Devlin Tangles of a protein found inside the brain cells of people with Alzheimer’s disease can be used to predict future brain shrinkage, research suggests. In healthy people, a protein called tau is important in supporting the internal structure of brain cells. However, in those with Alzheimer’s, chemical changes take place that cause the protein to form tangles that disrupt the cells. Such tangles have previously been linked to a loss of brain cells. Now scientists have used imaging techniques to track the extent of tau tangles in the brains of those with early signs of Alzheimer’s, revealing that levels of the protein predict not only how much brain shrinkage will subsequently occur, but where. “Our study supports the notion that tau pathology accumulates upstream of brain tissue loss and clinical symptoms,” said Prof Gil Rabinovici, a co-author of the research from the University of California, San Francisco. A number of drugs targeting tau tangles are currently in clinical trials, including some that aim to interfere with the production of tau in the brain or its spread between cells. Dr Renaud La Joie, another author of the research, said the findings suggested the imaging technique could prove valuable both in choosing which patients to enrol to test such drugs and in monitoring whether the drugs work. Dr Laura Phipps, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “The ability to track tau in the brain will be critical for testing treatments designed to prevent the protein causing damage, and the scans used in this study could be an important tool for future clinical trials.” Writing in the journal Science Translational Medicine, La Joie and colleagues report how they used an imaging technique called PET to study the brains of 32 people aged between 49 and 83 who were in the early stages of showing Alzheimer’s symptoms. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Alzheimers; Brain imaging
Link ID: 26928 - Posted: 01.02.2020

Correspondent Lesley Stahl Who among us hasn't wished we could read someone else's mind, know exactly what they're thinking? Well that's impossible, of course, since our thoughts are, more than anything else, our own. Private, personal, unreachable. Or at least that's what we've always, well, thought. Advances in neuroscience have shown that, on a physical level, our thoughts are actually a vast network of neurons firing all across our brains. So if that brain activity could be identified and analyzed, could our thoughts be decoded? Could our minds be read? Well, a team of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has spent more than a decade trying to do just that. We started our reporting on their work 10 years ago, and what they've discovered since, has drawn us back. In Carnegie Mellon's scanner room, two floors underground, a steady stream of research subjects come to have their brains and thoughts "read" in this MRI machine. It's a type of scanning called functional MRI, FMRI. That looks at what's happening inside the brain as a person thinks. Marcel Just: It's like being an astronomer when the first telescope is discovered, or being a biologist when the first microscope is-- is developed. Neuroscientist Marcel Just says this technology has made it possible for the first time to see the physical makeup of our thoughts. When we first visited Dr. Just's lab ten years ago, he and his team had conducted a study. They put people in the scanner and asked them to think about ten objects, five of them tools like screwdriver and hammer and five of them dwellings like igloo and castle, while measuring activity levels throughout their brains. The idea was to crunch the data and try to identify distinctive patterns of activity for each object. Lesley Stahl: You had them think about a screwdriver. Marcel Just: Uh-huh. Lesley Stahl: And the computer found the place in the brain where that person was thinking "screwdriver?" Marcel Just: Screwdriver isn't one place in the brain. It's many places in the brain. When you think of a screwdriver, you think about how you hold it, how you twist it, what it looks like… Lesley Stahl: And each of those functions are in different places? Marcel Just: Correct. He showed us that by dividing the brain into thousands of tiny cubes and analyzing the amount of activity in each one, his team was able to identify unique patterns for each object. © 2019 CBS Interactive Inc.

Keyword: Emotions; Brain imaging
Link ID: 26853 - Posted: 11.26.2019

Cody A. Siciliano Some individuals consume alcohol their entire adult life without developing an alcohol use disorder. Others, however, quickly transition to compulsive and problematic drinking. Can we determine what makes some people vulnerable to addiction? Alcohol drinking is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and is responsible for millions of deaths per year worldwide. If the reasons why some people are susceptible to alcohol use disorder were known, it might be possible to more effectively treat this devastating disease, or even intervene before serious problems emerge. I have spent my career as a neuroscientist and pharmacologist trying to understand how drugs and alcohol act on the brain, and what makes a brain more or less susceptible to substance use disorders. My laboratory at the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research develops approaches for studying addictive behaviors in rats and mice. Using electrochemical and optical approaches to measure brain activity, our goal is to determine how patterns of activity in brain cells give rise to these behaviors – and how we may use this information to treat or prevent substance use disorders. In a report published in the Nov. 22 issue of the journal Science, Kay Tye of the Salk Institute and I set out to understand how binge drinking alters the brain and how this can lead to compulsive behaviors in some drinkers. To study this, we designed an experiment in which mice were scored for their propensity to drink alcohol. We measured compulsive drinking by determining how much they drank when we mixed the alcohol with a bitter tasting substance that mice normally avoid. © 2010–2019, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Brain imaging
Link ID: 26844 - Posted: 11.22.2019

An exciting new study out of the University of Toronto shows that the brain lights up when you think things. “I mean it’s incredible,” said neuroscientist Dr. Prya Laghara. “We now have the technology to put someone into an fMRI, tell them to think things, and then watch their brain light up.” In order to prove this, Dr. Laghara recruited undergraduate students, put them in fMRIs, and then asked them to think things. “I told them to think about anything, anything at all, and no matter what they thought about their brains lit up.” When asked whether her study had any methodological issues, Dr. Laghara scoffed. “We ran this study with 2000 undergraduate participants over the course of three years. In every condition, with every participant, their brain lit up when they thought things.” “My colleagues all over the world are replicating this study, and so far nobody has been able to refute the hypothesis that the brain lights up when you think things. It’s an incredibly robust finding.” Thanks to this breakthrough in neuroscience, the University of Toronto is taking the next decade’s stem cell research funds and using them to purchase ten fMRIs. Copyright Simplosion 2019

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 26827 - Posted: 11.18.2019

By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online An infectious disease that can harm the brain and is spread to people by tick bites has been identified in ticks in the UK for the first time. Public Health England (PHE) says it has confirmed cases of tick-borne encephalitis virus in ticks from two parts of England - Thetford Forest and an area on the Hampshire-Dorset border. PHE says the risk to people is still "very low". It is monitoring the situation to check how common the infected ticks may be. What is it? A tick is a tiny, spider-like creature that lives in undergrowth and on animals, including deer and dogs. People who spend time walking in countryside areas where infected ticks can be found are at risk of being bitten and catching diseases they carry. Tick-borne encephalitis virus is already circulating in mainland Europe and Scandinavia, as well as Asia. Evidence now shows it has reached the UK. How it got here is less clear. Experts say infected ticks may have hitched a ride on migratory birds. Earlier this year, a European visitor, who has since recovered, became ill after being bitten by a tick while in the New Forest area, Public Health England says. Further investigations revealed infected ticks were present in two locations in England. Should I worry? Ticks are becoming more common across many parts of the UK, largely due to increasing deer numbers. Being bitten by one doesn't necessarily mean you will get sick. Dr Nick Phin, from Public Health England, said: ''These are early research findings and indicate the need for further work. However, the risk to the general public is currently assessed to be very low." Most people who catch the virus will have no or only mild flu-like symptoms. But the disease can progress to affect the brain and central nervous system and can sometimes be fatal. © 2019 BBC

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 26782 - Posted: 11.02.2019