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Documentary follows implosion of billion-euro brain project

Alison Abbott In October 2013, I attended the launch of the Human Brain Project in Lausanne, Switzerland, as correspondent for Nature. I hoped to leave with a better understanding of the exact mission of the baffling billion-euro enterprise, but I was frustrated. Things became clear the following year, when the project fell spectacularly, and very publicly, apart. Noah Hutton’s documentary In Silico captures a sense of what it was like behind the scenes of the project, which was supported with great fanfare by the European Commission. It had been hyped as a quantum leap in understanding how the human brain works. Instead, it left a trail of angry neuroscientists across Europe. Yet aspects of what went so expensively wrong still remain elusive. In Silico is more about the back story of the Human Brain Project (HBP). Hutton was 22 years old when he watched a 2009 talk by Henry Markram, the controversial figure who later became the first director of the HBP. Markham was speaking about the Blue Brain Project, a major initiative he had launched a few years before at one of Europe’s top universities, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, with generous funding from the Swiss government. He claimed that he would — with the help of a supercomputer related to the one that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 — simulate an entire rodent brain within a decade. He planned to build it from information about the brain’s tens of millions of individual neurons. © 2020 Springer Nature Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 27614 - Posted: 12.09.2020

'In Silico:' Director Noah Sutton reveals how one neuroscientist's pursuit of perfection went awry

In a 2009 TED Talk, Israeli neuroscientist Henry Markram made a shocking claim: he was going to create a machine version of human brain within 10 years. The project was catnip to filmmaker Noah Hutton, who began documenting Markram's quest. Ultimately, Hutton followed Markram for a decade — but the scientist's lofty goal remains conspicuously incomplete. The resulting film, In Silico, finally makes its world premiere as part of the online version of the DOC NYC film festival on November 11. The film traces Markram’s journey with the Human Brain Project, from the project’s inception to its $1.4 billion in funding from the European Commission — and how it failed to meet its 10-year goal by 2019. Following a neuroscientist for a decade reveals a lot of highs and lows. Hutton presents the controversies by interviewing both the Human Brain Project team and its critics, including Princeton neuroscientist Sebastian Seung, researcher Zach Mainen at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown based in Portugal, and experimental cognitive psychologist Stanislas Dehane, who is professor at Collège de France in Paris. The film also features candid interviews with neuroscientists Christof Koch, who head's up the Allen Institute's MindScope Program, Harvard University's Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Jeff W. Lichtman, and Stanford University neuroscience adjunct professor David Eagleman. Neuroscientists Idan Segev of Hebrew University in Israel, Cori Bargmann, Torsten N. Weisel Professor of Genetics and Genomics and Neuroscience and Behavior at Rockefeller University, and Cold Spring Harbor Lab professor Anne Churchland.

Brain-scanning backpack brings neuroscience into the real world

By Rebekah Tuchscherer Call it neuroscience on the go. Scientists have developed a backpack that tracks and stimulates brain activity as people go about their daily lives. The advance could allow researchers to get a sense of how the brain works outside of a laboratory—and how to monitor diseases such as Parkinson’s and post-traumatic stress disorder in real-world settings. The technology is “an inspiring demonstration of what’s possible” with portable neuroscience equipment, says Timothy Spellman, a neurobiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine who was not involved with the work. The backpack and its vast suite of tools, he says, could broaden the landscape for neuroscience research to study the brain while the body is in motion. Typically, when scientists want to scan the brain, they need a lot of room—and a lot of money. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners, which detect activity in various regions of the brain, are about the size of a pickup truck and can cost more than $1 million. And patients must stay still in the machine for about 1 hour to ensure a clear, readable scan. © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Is Elon Musk over-hyping his brain-hacking Neuralink tech?

Rory Cellan-Jones He is the most charismatic figure in technology with some amazing achievements to his name, from making electric cars desirable to developing rockets that can return to earth and be reused. But dare to suggest that anything Elon Musk does is not groundbreaking or visionary and you can expect a backlash from the great man and his army of passionate fans. That is what happened when a British academic criticised Musk's demo on Friday of his Neuralink project - and the retaliation he faced was largely my fault. Neuralink is a hugely ambitious plan to link the human brain to a computer. It might eventually allow people with conditions such as Parkinson's disease to control their physical movements or manipulate machines via the power of thought. There are plenty of scientists already at work in this field. But Musk has far greater ambitions than most, talking of developing "superhuman cognition" - enhancing the human brain in part to combat the threat he sees from artificial intelligence. Friday night's demo involved a pig called Gertrude fitted with what the tech tycoon described as a "Fitbit in your skull". A tiny device recorded the animal's neural activity and sent it wirelessly to a screen. A series of beeps happened every time her snout was touched, indicating activity in the part of her brain seeking out food. "I think this is incredibly profound", commented Musk. Some neuroscience experts were not quite as impressed. The UK's Science Media Centre, which does a good job of trying to make complex scientific stories accessible, put out a press release quoting Prof Andrew Jackson, professor of neural interfaces at Newcastle University. "I don't think there was anything revolutionary in the presentation," he said. "But they are working through the engineering challenges of placing multiple electrodes into the brain. "In terms of their technology, 1,024 channels is not that impressive these days, but the electronics to relay them wirelessly is state-of-the-art, and the robotic implantation is nice. "The biggest challenge is what you do with all this brain data. The demonstrations were actually quite underwhelming in this regard, and didn't show anything that hasn't been done before." He went on to question why Neuralink's work was not being published in peer-reviewed papers. I took his words and his summary of the demo - "this is solid engineering but mediocre neuroscience" - and posted a tweet. © 2020 BBC.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 27443 - Posted: 09.02.2020

A centerpiece of EBRAINS’ human brain atlas is presented in “Science”

"Julich-Brain" is the name of the first 3D-atlas of the human brain that reflects the variability of the brain’s structure with microscopic resolution. The atlas features close to 250 structurally distinct areas, each one based on the analysis of 10 brains. More than 24000 extremely thin brain sections were digitized, assembled in 3D and mapped by experts. As part of the new EBRAINS infrastructure of the European Human Brain Project, the atlas serves as an interface to link different information about the brain in a spatially precise way. German researchers led by Prof. Katrin Amunts have now presented the new brain atlas in the renowned journal Science. Under the microscope, it can be seen that the human brain is not uniformly structured, but divided into clearly distinguishable areas. They differ in the distribution and density of nerve cells and in function. With the Julich-Brain, researchers led by Katrin Amunts now present the most comprehensive digital map of the cellular architecture and make it available worldwide via the EBRAINS research infrastructure. "On the one hand, the digital brain atlas will help to interpret the results of neuroimaging studies, for example of patients, more accurately", says Katrin Amunts, Director at the German Research Center Juelich and Professor at the University of Düsseldorf. "On the other hand, it is becoming the basis for a kind of 'Google Earth' of the brain - because the cellular level is the best interface for linking data about very different facets of the brain. ©2017 Human Brain Project.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 1: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 27396 - Posted: 08.03.2020

The Beautiful Things inside Your Head: Winners of the 10th Annual Art of Neuroscience Contest

By Karen Kwon, Liz Tormes In 1968 an exhibit entitled Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. The first major event of its kind, Cybernetic Serendipity’s aim was to “present an area of activity which manifests artists’ involvement with science, and the scientists’ involvement with the arts,” wrote British art critic Jasia Reichardt, who curated the exhibit. Even though it was an art show, “most of the participants in the exhibition were scientists,” Reichardt said in a 2014 video. “Artists didn’t have computers in the 1960s.” A lot has changed since then, however. Computers, no longer the commodity of a select few, help artists to deviate from more traditional mediums. The changes since the 1960s are well-reflected in the entries for the 2020 Art of Neuroscience competition, held by the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. Now marking its 10th year, the contest features some highly technological pieces and others grounded in classical methods, such as drawing with pen on paper. The winning entries were created by independent artists, as well as working scientists, demonstrating that art and neuroscience can inspire both professions. A winner and four honorable mentions were selected from dozens of submitted works. And seven pieces were chosen by Scientific American as Editors’ Picks. (Photography editor Liz Tormes served on the panel of judges for the competition.) © 2020 Scientific American

How brains do what they do is more complex than what anatomy on its own suggests

Salvatore Domenic Morgera How the brain works remains a puzzle with only a few pieces in place. Of these, one big piece is actually a conjecture: that there’s a relationship between the physical structure of the brain and its functionality. The brain’s jobs include interpreting touch, visual and sound inputs, as well as speech, reasoning, emotions, learning, fine control of movement and many others. Neuroscientists presume that it’s the brain’s anatomy – with its hundreds of billions of nerve fibers – that make all of these functions possible. The brain’s “living wires” are connected in elaborate neurological networks that give rise to human beings’ amazing abilities. It would seem that if scientists can map the nerve fibers and their connections and record the timing of the impulses that flow through them for a higher function such as vision, they should be able to solve the question of how one sees, for instance. Researchers are getting better at mapping the brain using tractography – a technique that visually represents nerve fiber routes using 3D modeling. And they’re getting better at recording how information moves through the brain by using enhanced functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure blood flow. But in spite of these tools, no one seems much closer to figuring out how we really see. Neuroscience has only a rudimentary understanding of how it all fits together. To address this shortcoming, my team’s bioengineering research focuses on relationships between brain structure and function. The overall goal is to scientifically explain all the connections – both anatomical and wireless – that activate different brain regions during cognitive tasks. We’re working on complex models that better capture what scientists know of brain function. t © 2010–2020, The Conversation US, Inc.

Duke University researchers say every brain activity study you’ve ever read is wrong

By Arianne Cohen1 minute Read You know all those studies about brain activity? The ones that reveal thought patterns and feelings as a person performs a task? There’s a problem: The measurement they’re based on is inaccurate, according to a study out of Duke University that is rocking the field. Functional MRI machines (fMRIs) are excellent at determining the brain structures involved in a task. For example, a study asking 50 people to count or remember names while undergoing an fMRI scan would accurately identify which parts of the brain are active during the task. Brain scans showing functional MRI mapping for three tasks across two different days. Warm colors show the high consistency of activation levels across a group of people. Cool colors represent how poorly unique patterns of activity can be reliably measured in individuals. View image larger here. [Image: Annchen Knodt/Duke University] The trouble is that when the same person is asked to do the same tasks weeks or months apart, the results vary wildly. This is likely because fMRIs don’t actually measure brain activity directly: They measure blood flow to regions of the brain, which is used as a proxy for brain activity because neurons in those regions are presumably more active. Blood flow levels, apparently, change. “The correlation between one scan and a second is not even fair, it’s poor,” says lead author Ahmad Hariri, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Duke University. The researchers reexamined 56 peer-reviewed, published papers that conducted 90 fMRI experiments, some by leaders in the field, and also looked at the results of so-called “test/retest” fMRIs, where 65 subjects were asked to do the same tasks months apart. They found that of seven measures of brain function, none had consistent readings.

The Human Brain Project Has Entered Its Final Phase of Research

The Human Brain Project (HBP) has announced the start of its final phase as an EU-funded FET Flagship. The European Commission has signed a grant agreement to fund the HBP with 150 million Euros from now until 2023. Over the next three years, the project will narrow its focus to advance three core scientific areas – brain networks, their role in consciousness, and artificial neural nets – while expanding its innovative EBRAINS infrastructure. EBRAINS offers the most comprehensive atlas and database on the human brain, directly coupled with powerful computing and simulation tools, to research communities around neuroscience, medicine and technology. Currently transitioning into a sustainable infrastructure, EBRAINS will remain available to the scientific community, as a lasting contribution of the HBP to global scientific progress. Supercomputers, Big Data Analytics, Simulation, Robots and AI have all become new additions to the “toolbox” of modern neuroscience – a development strongly pushed forward by the HBP and its EBRAINS infrastructure. Started in 2013 as a FET Flagship project, the HBP is the largest brain science project in Europe. Now entering the final phase of its ten-year lifespan, the project is proud to present its scientific workplan and transformative technological offerings for brain research and brain-inspired research and development. HBP’s scientific activities in the new phase focus on three topics: networks that are studied across different spatial and temporal scales, their significance for consciousness and disorders of consciousness, and the development of artificial neural networks and neurorobotics.

fMRI Researcher Questions fMRI Research

Published by Steven Novella under Neuroscience This is an important and sobering study, that I fear will not get a lot of press attention – especially in the context of current events. It is a bit wonky, but this is exactly the level of knowledge one needs in order to be able to have any chance of consuming and putting into context scientific research. I have discussed fMRI previously – it stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging. It uses MRI technology to image blood flow to different parts of the brain, and from that infer brain activity. It is used more in research than clinically, but it does have some clinical application – if, for example, we want to see how active a lesion in the brain is. In research it is used to help map the brain, to image how different parts of the brain network and function together. It is also used to see which part of the brain lights up when subjects engage in specific tasks. It is this last application of fMRI that was studied. Professor Ahmad Hariri from Duke University just published a reanalysis of the last 15 years of his own research, calling into question its validity. Any time someone points out that an entire field of research might have some fatal problems, it is reason for concern. But I do have to point out the obvious silver lining here – this is the power of science, self-correction. This is a dramatic example, with a researcher questioning his own research, and not afraid to publish a study which might wipe out the last 15 years of his own research. Copyright © 2020 All Rights Reserved .

Studies of Brain Activity Aren’t as Useful as Scientists Thought

Hundreds of published studies over the last decade have claimed it's possible to predict an individual’s patterns of thoughts and feelings by scanning their brain in an MRI machine as they perform some mental tasks. But a new analysis by some of the researchers who have done the most work in this area finds that those measurements are highly suspect when it comes to drawing conclusions about any individual person’s brain. Watching the brain through a functional MRI machine (fMRI) is still great for finding the general brain structures involved in a given task across a group of people, said Ahmad Hariri, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University who led the reanalysis. “Scanning 50 people is going to accurately reveal what parts of the brain, on average, are more active during a mental task, like counting or remembering names,” Hariri said Functional MRI measures blood flow as a proxy for brain activity. It shows where blood is being sent in the brain, presumably because neurons in that area are more active during a mental task. The problem is that the level of activity for any given person probably won’t be the same twice, and a measure that changes every time it is collected cannot be applied to predict anyone’s future mental health or behavior. Hariri and his colleagues reexamined 56 published papers based on fMRI data to gauge their reliability across 90 experiments. Hariri said the researchers recognized that “the correlation between one scan and a second is not even fair, it’s poor.” © Copyright 2020 Duke University.

Flexible implant records brain activity in rats for more than a year

by Chloe Williams / A new flexible electrode array can detect the activity of neurons in a rat’s brain at high resolution for more than a year1. The device could be used to study how neuronal activity is altered in autism. Arrays usually have wires connected to each electrode to pick up its signal, but this design is bulky and works only in arrays consisting of 100 electrodes or fewer, limiting the array’s coverage and resolution. Devices with thousands of electrodes have integrated switches to consolidate signals into fewer wires. But these devices usually have a lifespan of only a few days. Their polymer-based coatings are often permeable to water or contain tiny defects that allow body fluids to seep into the device and current to leak out, damaging both the device and brain tissue. The new device combines electronic switches and a specialized protective coating so that scientists can record activity at the surface of the brain at high resolution over extended periods of time. The array, called Neural Matrix, consists of 1,008 surface electrodes laid out in 28 columns and 36 rows. Switches, or transistors, built into the array combine signals from all the electrodes in a column to a single output wire. The signals from each electrode in the column are recorded via the wire in a specific sequence, making it possible to separate them later. © 2020 Simons Foundation

Mouse brains seen in unprecedented 3D detail, thanks to new staining technique

By Dennis Normile Scientists studying brains and other organs and cancerous tumors have long tried to get detailed 3D views of their insides—down to the level of blood vessel and cell type. But producing such images is time-consuming and difficult. Now, dramatic improvements to a 3D imaging technique can reveal the internal components of entire organs or even animals in a simple procedure, researchers report this week. The new tissue staining protocol allows cellular level analyses in unprecedented detail; it could aid research efforts in neuroscience, developmental and evolutionary biology, and immunology, and it could prove useful in diagnosing some cancers and studying damaged brain tissue after death. To image biological samples in 3D, researchers basically have two main options: They can slice tissues into thin sections and use computer software to reconstruct the whole sample, or they can render biological tissue transparent using special chemicals, which lets researchers view its interior with an optical microscope. To distinguish different cell types, researchers typically stain tissues by soaking them in a cocktail of dyes and chemicals. But getting staining dyes to penetrate organs and large samples has proved difficult. To tackle this problem, researchers at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research identified a gel that closely mimics the physicochemical properties of organs that have undergone the tissue clearing process. Starting with computer simulations and following up with laboratory tests, the team optimized the soaking solution temperature, dye and antibody concentrations, chemical additives, and electrical properties to produce the best staining and imaging results. They then tested their method with more than two dozen commonly used dyes and antibodies on mouse and marmoset brains. © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Deep Brain Optogenetic Control Without Implants

Ruth Williams Scientists have created a light-responsive opsin so sensitive that even when engineered into cells deep within tissue it can respond to an external light stimulus, according to a report in Neuron yesterday (April 30). Experiments in mice and macaques showed that shining blue light on the surface of the skull or brain was sufficient to activate opsin-expressing neurons six millimeters deep. “I was pretty blown away that this was even possible,” says Gregory Corder, who studies the neurological basis of pain and addiction at the University of Pennsylvania and who was not involved with the work. At that sort of depth, he continues, “essentially no part of the rodent brain is off-limits now for doing this non-invasive [technique]. . . . It’s pretty impressive.” “This development will help to extend the use of optogenetics in non-human primate models, and bring the techniques closer to clinical application in humans,” adds neurological disease expert Adriana Galvan of Yerkes National Primate Research Center in an email to The Scientist. Galvan was not a member of the research team. Optogenetics is a technique whereby excitable cells, such as neurons, can be controlled at will by light. To do this, cells are genetically engineered to produce ion channels called opsins that sit in the cells’ membranes and open in response to a certain wavelength of light. Switching on the light, then, floods the cells with ions, causing them to fire. Because light doesn’t penetrate tissue easily, to activate opsin-producing neurons deep in the brain of a living animal, researchers insert fiber optic cables. This is “highly invasive,” says Galvan, explaining that “the brain tissue can be damaged.” © 1986–2020 The Scientist.

Quasi-Lymphatic System in the Rodent Eye Clears Waste

Abby Olena Instead of a traditional lymphatic system, the brain harbors a so-called glymphatic system, a network of tunnels surrounding arteries and veins through which fluid enters and waste products drain from the brain. In a study published March 25 in Science Translational Medicine, researchers show that the rodent eye also has a glymphatic system that takes out the trash through spaces surrounding the veins within the optic nerve. They also found that this system may be compromised in glaucoma and is capable of clearing amyloid-β, the build up of which has been implicated in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration. The work began in the group of Maiken Nedergaard, a neuroscientist with labs at both the University of Rochester Medical School and the University of Copenhagen, who described the glymphatic system of the brain in 2012. Xiaowei Wang, then a graduate student in Nedergaard’s group and now a postdoc at the University of California, San Francisco, was interested in the eye and spearheaded the search for an ocular glymphatic system. At that point, nobody had speculated that the optic nerve—in addition to transmitting electrical signals—is also a fluid transport highway, Nedergaard says. As Wang’s project was getting underway, Nedergaard met Lu Chen, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, at a meeting. Chen’s group had done previous research on ocular lymphatics that focused on the front of the eye. There, the majority of the aqueous humor—the fluid that fills the chamber between the cornea and the lens—drains from the eye to the surrounding vasculature through a circular lymph-like vessel called Schlemm’s canal. This helps regulate intraocular pressure. Chen tells The Scientist that she and Nedergaard decided to collaborate to connect the knowledge about the front of the eye with their questions about the back of the eye. © 1986–2020 The Scientist

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System; Chapter 10: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 1: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System; Chapter 7: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Link ID: 27207 - Posted: 04.22.2020

Decoding the Canine Mind

Gregory Berns, M.D., Ph.D. There is no official census for dogs and cats, but in 2016, the American Veterinary Medical Association estimated that 59 percent of households in the United States had a pet. Although the numbers of dogs and cats remains debatable, dogs continue to gain in popularity with 38 percent of households having at least one. Families with children are even more likely to have a dog (55 percent). With all due respect to cats, dogs have insinuated themselves into human society, forming deep emotional bonds with us and compelling us to feed and shelter them. Worldwide, the dog population is approaching one billion, the majority free-ranging. Even though many people are convinced they know what their dog is thinking, little is actually known about what is going on in dogs’ heads. This may be surprising because the field of experimental psychology had its birth with Pavlov and his salivating dogs. But as dogs gained traction as household pets, in many cases achieving the status of family members, their use as research subjects fell out of favor. In large part, this was a result of the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, which set standards for the treatment of animals in research and put an end to the practice of stealing pets for experimentation. How strange it is then that these creatures, whose nearest relatives are wolves, live with us and even share our beds, yet we know almost nothing about what they’re thinking. In the last decade or so, however, the situation has begun to change, and we are in the midst of a renaissance of canine cognitive science. Research labs have sprung up around the world, and dogs participate not as involuntary subjects, but as partners in scientific discovery. This new research is beginning to shed light on what it’s like to be a dog and the nature of the dog-human bond. © 2020 The Dana Foundation.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 1: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 27195 - Posted: 04.16.2020

BRAIN Initiative tool helps researchers watch neural activity in 3D

Our ability to study networks within the nervous system has been limited by the tools available to observe large volumes of cells at once. An ultra-fast, 3D imaging technique called SCAPE microscopy, developed through the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Technologies (BRAIN) Initiative, allows a greater volume of tissue to be viewed in a way that is much less damaging to delicate networks of living cells. In a study published in Science, researchers used SCAPE to watch for the first time how the mouse olfactory epithelium — the part of the nervous system that directly perceives smells — reacted in real time to complex odors. They found that those nerve cells may play a larger and more complex role in interpreting smells than was previously understood. “This is an elegant demonstration of the power of BRAIN Initiative technologies to provide new insights into how the brain decodes information to produce sensations, thoughts, and actions,” said Edmund Talley, Ph.D., program director, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of NIH. The SCAPE microscope was developed in the laboratory of Elizabeth M.C. Hillman, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering and radiology and principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute in New York City. “SCAPE microscopy has been incredibly enabling for studies where large volumes need to be observed at once and in real time,” said Dr. Hillman. “Because the cells and tissues can be left intact and visualized at high speeds in three dimensions, we are able to explore many new questions that could not be studied previously.”

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System; Chapter 9: Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 1: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System; Chapter 6: Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell
Link ID: 27189 - Posted: 04.14.2020

Brain Support

By Robert Frederick An early sign of neurodegenerative disease at the cellular level is often the loss of integrity in axons, the threadlike part of neurons that conduct impulses. To find out what causes that loss of integrity, researchers have been trying to better understand the axon’s lining, called the membrane-associated periodic scaffold (MPS). If neuroscientists can discover what signals the MPS to disassemble, they may gain an early diagnostic tool for neurodegenerative diseases or a new target for drug therapy. Back in 2013, researchers using advanced optical microscopy identified the presence of rings in the MPS made from the protein actin. At first, the discovery was met with skepticism because no one had seen the rings using electron microscopes, which have more resolution than optical methods. But preparing neurons for electron microscopy often involves dissolving the membrane with a surfactant. “If you remove completely the membrane, you also disorganize the scaffold that is very tightly associated with the membrane,” says Christophe Leterrier, a neuro-biologist at Aix-Marseille Université in France. To see the periodic rings (shown above in orange at increasing levels of zoom) Leterrier combined optical and electron microscopy. Just as previous researchers had done to visualize the MPS, the first step involved a technique called unroofing a cell, which can isolate a cell’s membrane without disorganizing the underlying scaffold. But the researchers then used electron microscopy to image the same unroofed axon: Teamed up with Stéphane Vassilopoulos, Leterrier’s group essentially made a platinum replica of the MPS and used electron microscopy (shown above in grayscale) on the replica “to really see individual proteins.” The researchers published their findings in Nature Communications, discovering that the rings are like braided wreaths made from long actin filaments. Leterrier says the next step is to find what signal will prompt the MPS to disassemble but will not affect a neuron’s other actin structures, such as dendritic spines, which receive other neurons’ signals. © 2020 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society

Neuroscience needs some new ideas

By Stephen Casper. The poet Emily Dickinson rendered the brain wider than the sky, deeper than the sea, and about the weight of God. Scientists facing the daunting task of describing this organ conventionally conjure up different kinds of metaphor — of governance; of maps, infrastructure networks and telecommunications; of machines, robots, computers and the Internet. The comparisons have been practical and abundant. Yet, perhaps because of their ubiquity, the metaphors we use to understand the brain often go unnoticed. We forget that they are descriptors, and see them instead as natural properties. Such hidden dangers are central to biologist and historian Matthew Cobb’s The Idea of the Brain. This ambitious intellectual history follows the changing understanding of the brain from antiquity to the present, mainly in Western thought. Cobb outlines a growing challenge to the usefulness of metaphor in directing and explaining neuroscience research. With refreshing humility, he contends that science is nowhere near working out what brains do and how — or even if anything is like them at all. Cobb shows how ideas about the brain have always been forged from the moral, philosophical and technological frameworks to hand for those crafting the dominant narratives of the time. In the seventeenth century, the French philosopher René Descartes imagined an animal brain acting through hydraulic mechanisms, while maintaining a view of the divine nature of a mind separate from matter. Later authorities, such as the eighteenth-century physician and philosopher Julien Offray de Le Mettrie, secularized the image and compared the human to a machine. The Italian physicist Alessandro Volta rejected the idea of ‘animal electricity’, proposed by his rival Luigi Galvani as a vital force that animates organic matter. Volta was driven at least partly by his aversion to the mechanistic view. © 2020 Springer Nature Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20: ; Chapter 1: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 27154 - Posted: 03.31.2020

Seismic technology to probe the Earth adapted to probe the brain

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.

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