#Illuminating neuron activity in 3-D Researchers at MIT and the University of Vienna have created an imaging system that reveals neural activity throughout the brains of living animals.
This technique, the first that can generate 3-D movies of entire brains at the millisecond timescale,
as well as the entire brain of a zebrafish larva, offering a more complete picture of nervous system activity than has been previously possible. ooking at the activity of just one neuron in the brain doesn tell you how that information is being computed;
says Ed Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and one of the leaders of the research team. n short,
you have to see the entire brain. The new approach, described May 18 in Nature Methods, could also help neuroscientists learn more about the biological basis of brain disorders. e don really know
Boyden team developed the brain-mapping method with researchers in the lab of Alipasha Vaziri of the University of Vienna and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.
Scanning the brain with a laser beam can produce 3-D images of neural activity, but it takes a long time to capture an image
who is a member of MIT Media Lab and Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research. Prevedel built the microscope,
and observing the results elsewhere in the brain, scientists could determine which neurons are participating in particular tasks.
and Gordon Wetzstein, a research scientist at the Media Lab. The work at MIT was funded by the Allen Institute for Brain science;
the NSF Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines at MIT; and Jeremy and Joyce Wertheimer n
the Pediatric Brain Tumour Fund, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Alnylam, and the Center for RNA Therapeutics and Biology e
#Delving deep into the brain Launched in 2013, the national BRAIN INITIATIVE aims to revolutionize our understanding of cognition by mapping the activity of every neuron in the human brain,
revealing how brain circuits interact to create memories, learn new skills, and interpret the world around us.
Before that can happen, neuroscientists need new tools that will let them probe the brain more deeply
and in greater detail, says Alan Jasanoff, an MIT associate professor of biological engineering. here a general recognition that in order to understand the brain processes in comprehensive detail,
we need ways to monitor neural function deep in the brain with spatial, temporal, and functional precision, he says.
Jasanoff and colleagues have taken now a step toward that goal: They have established a technique that allows them to track neural communication in the brain over time,
using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) along with a specialized molecular sensor. This is the first time anyone has been able to map neural signals with high precision over large brain regions in living animals,
offering a new window on brain function, says Jasanoff, who is also an associate member of MIT Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research.
His team used this molecular imaging approach, described in the May 1 online edition of Science,
to study the neurotransmitter dopamine in a region called the ventral striatum, which is involved in motivation,
reward, and reinforcement of behavior. In future studies, Jasanoff plans to combine dopamine imaging with functional MRI techniques that measure overall brain activity to gain a better understanding of how dopamine levels influence neural circuitry. e want to be able to relate dopamine
signaling to other neural processes that are going on, Jasanoff says. e can look at different types of stimuli
and try to understand what dopamine is doing in different brain regions and relate it to other measures of brain function.
Tracking dopamine Dopamine is one of many neurotransmitters that help neurons to communicate with each other over short distances.
Much of the brain dopamine is produced by a structure called the ventral tegmental area (VTA.
This dopamine travels through the mesolimbic pathway to the ventral striatum, where it combines with sensory information from other parts of the brain to reinforce behavior
and help the brain learn new tasks and motor functions. This circuit also plays a major role in addiction.
This allows the researchers to see where in the brain dopamine is being released. The researchers also developed an algorithm that lets them calculate the precise amount of dopamine present in each fraction of a cubic millimeter of the ventral striatum.
After delivering the MRI sensor to the ventral striatum of rats, Jasanoff team electrically stimulated the mesolimbic pathway
and was able to detect exactly where in the ventral striatum dopamine was released. An area known as the nucleus accumbens core, known to be one of the main targets of dopamine from the VTA,
showed the highest levels. The researchers also saw that some dopamine is released in neighboring regions such as the ventral pallidum,
which regulates motivation and emotions, and parts of the thalamus, which relays sensory and motor signals in the brain.
Each dopamine stimulation lasted for 16 seconds and the researchers took an MRI image every eight seconds,
allowing them to track how dopamine levels changed as the neurotransmitter was released from cells and then disappeared. e could divide up the map into different regions of interest
He and his colleagues plan to build on this work by expanding their studies to other parts of the brain,
and brains work and translates that knowledge into technology that reflects those principles leading to a world where technology
This technique, described in the March 24 online edition of Nature Communications, could also be deployed to help identify the huge array of neurons found in the brain cortex,
and elsewhere in the brain, to robustly and precisely know the cell types, he says.
Sebastian Seung, a former MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences and physics who is now at Princeton university,
which feed information to the brain visual processing regions via the optic nerve. Neuroscientists have identified at least nine types of ganglion cells with distinct functions, structures,
and send the information to parts of the brain that control circadian rhythms. These genetically and functionally defined cell types offered a valuable starting point for the new study,
the researchers used a light microscope to image individual neurons in the brains of mice that had been engineered genetically so that one class of ganglions,
and brain interpret visual information, says Constance Cepko, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical school.
They also hope to use their technique to study parts of the brain that have many layers of neurons especially the neocortex
visual information flows into your brain, which interprets what youe seeing. Now, for the first time, MIT neuroscientists have mapped noninvasively this flow of information in the human brain with unique accuracy,
using a novel brain-scanning technique. This technique, which combines two existing technologies, allows researchers to identify precisely both the location and timing of human brain activity.
Using this new approach, the MIT researchers scanned individualsbrains as they looked at different images
and were able to pinpoint, to the millisecond, when the brain recognizes and categorizes an object,
and where these processes occur. his method gives you a visualization of henand hereat the same time.
Dimitrios Pantazis, a research scientist at MIT Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research, is also an author of the paper.
When and where Until now, scientists have been able to observe the location or timing of human brain activity at high resolution,
The most commonly used type of brain scan, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri), measures changes in blood flow
revealing which parts of the brain are involved in a particular task. However, it works too slowly to keep up with the brain millisecond-by-millisecond dynamics.
Another imaging technique, known as magnetoencephalography (MEG), uses an array of hundreds of sensors encircling the head to measure magnetic fields produced by neuronal activity in the brain.
These sensors offer a dynamic portrait of brain activity over time, down to the millisecond, but do not tell the precise location of the signals.
To combine the time and location information generated by these two scanners, the researchers used a computational technique called representational similarity analysis,
Each image was shown for half a second. e wanted to measure how visual information flows through the brain.
and twice in an MEG scanner giving the researchers a huge set of data on the timing and location of brain activity.
the researchers produced a timeline of the brain object-recognition pathway that is very similar to results previously obtained by recording electrical signals in the visual cortex of monkeys,
visual information entered a part of the brain called the primary visual cortex, or V1, which recognizes basic elements of a shape,
where the brain identified the object as early as 120 milliseconds. Within 160 milliseconds, all objects had been classified into categories such as plant or animal.
a principal investigator in cognition and brain sciences at Cambridge university. he combination of MEG and fmri in humans is no surrogate for invasive animal studies with techniques that simultaneously have high spatial and temporal precision,
The MIT researchers are now using representational similarity analysis to study the accuracy of computer models of vision by comparing brain scan data with the modelspredictions of how vision works.
scientists should also be able to study how the human brain analyzes other types of information such as motor, verbal,
Pantazis says. e now have the tools to precisely map brain function both in space and time,
opening up tremendous possibilities to study the human brain. The research was funded by the National Eye Institute
#Schizophrenia linked to abnormal brain waves Schizophrenia patients usually suffer from a breakdown of organized thought often accompanied by delusions or hallucinations.
The researchers found that mice lacking the brain protein calcineurin have hyperactive brainwave oscillations in the hippocampus
and Neuroscience created mice lacking the gene for calcineurin in the forebrain; these mice displayed several behavioral symptoms of schizophrenia including impaired short-term memory attention deficits and abnormal social behavior.
These replays occur in association with very high frequency brainwave oscillations known as ripple events. In mice lacking calcineurin the researchers found that brain activity was normal as the mice ran the course
but when they paused their ripple events were much stronger and more frequent. Furthermore the firing of the place cells was augmented abnormally
The researchers believe the abnormal hyperactivity they found in the hippocampus may represent a disruption of the brain s default mode network a communication network that connects the hippocampus prefrontal cortex (where most thought
When the brain is focusing on a specific goal or activity the default mode network gets turned down.
and during tasks that require the brain to focus and patients do not perform well in these tasks.
The research was funded by the RIKEN Brain science Institute the National institutes of health an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship a NARSAD Young Investigator Award and the Johns Hopkins Brain science Institute e
#New fibers can deliver many simultaneous stimuli The human brain complexity makes it extremely challenging to study not only because of its sheer size,
limiting the information that can be derived from the brain at any point in time. Now researchers at MIT may have found a way to change that.
they have created a system that could deliver optical signals and drugs directly into the brain,
so sharp when you take a step and the brain moves with respect to the device, you end up scrambling the tissue.
At the same time, one or more drugs could be injected into the brain through the hollow channels, while electrical signals in the neurons are recorded to determine, in real time,
The fibers could ultimately be used for precision mapping of the responses of different regions of the brain or spinal cord,
diverse collection of multifunctional fibers, tailored for insertion into the brain where they can stimulate
The results significantly expand the toolkit of techniques that will be essential to our development of a basic understanding of brain function.
the Center for Materials science and engineering, the Center for Sensorimotor Neural engineering, the Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research, the U s army Research Office through the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies,
and shown that inhibiting a previously unknown brain circuit that regulates compulsive sugar consumption does not interfere with healthy eating. or the first time,
we have identified how the brain encodes compulsive sugar seeking and wee also shown that it appears to be distinct from normal,
a principle investigator at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory who previously developed novel techniques for studying brain circuitry in addiction
Addictive drugs ijackthe brain the natural reward-processing center, the ventral tegmental area (VTA. But food is a natural reward and,
For the study, Tye and her graduate student Edward Nieh focused on the connections between the VTA and the lateral hypothalamus (LH),
and connects to multiple other brain regions, no one had isolated yet a feeding and reward-processing circuit.
and recorded their naturally occurring activities in brain slices, with the help of Gillian Matthews,
but exactly where and how this happens in the brain has been a mystery, says Tye,
who is also the Whitehead Career development Assistant professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive sciences. ow we have evidence showing that this transition is represented in the LH-VTA circuit.
Historically, these genetic brain diseases were viewed as untreatable. However, in recent years neuroscientists have shown in animal models that it is possible to reverse the debilitating effects of these gene mutations.
called FMR1, is turned off during brain development. Fragile X is rare, affecting one in about 4, 000 individuals.
Synaptic protein synthesis was disrupted indeed in the hippocampus, a part of the brain important for memory formation.
similar to fragile X. Restoring brain function after disease onset These findings encouraged the MIT researchers to attempt to improve memory function in the 16p11.2 mice with the same approach that has worked in fragile X mice.
previously believed to be an intractable consequence of altered early brain development, might instead arise from ongoing alterations in synaptic signaling that can be corrected by drugs.
This research was supported in part by the Howard hughes medical institute, the National institute of mental health, the Simons Foundation, the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT,
Using the data from this study carbon nanoparticles coated with genetically-engineered proteins are being used to target glioblastoma the most aggressive form of brain tumour.
read brain activity, monitor heart rate or perform other functions. To boost sensitivity to touch, some of them mimic microstructures found in beetles and dragonflies, for example,
According to TAU doctoral student and research team member Dr. Lilach Bareket there are already medical devices that attempt to treat visual impairment by sending sensory signals to the brain.
and send visual signals to a person's brain to counter the effects of AMD and related vision disorders many of these approaches require the use of metallic parts and cumbersome wiring or result in low resolution images.
"The biggest challenge facing researchers trying to culture neurons for study is that it's very difficult to recreate the cozy, soft, three-dimensional environment of the brain.
since nerve cells vary greatly in size from small brain cells to large muscle-controlling nerves. Li and Froeter have sent already microtube arrays of various dimensions to other research groups studying neural networks for diverse applications.
If I'm wearing a gadget that suddenly tells me I have a form of brain cancer that's incurable
so that it can navigate through the human body enabling the crew to perform surgery in the brain.
#Atom-width graphene sensors could provide unprecedented insights into brain structure and function Understanding the anatomical structure
and function of the brain is a longstanding goal in neuroscience and a top priority of President Obama's brain initiative.
Electrical monitoring and stimulation of neuronal signaling is a mainstay technique for studying brain function while emerging optical techniques
and exploring brain functions. Electrical and optical techniques offer distinct and complementary advantages that if used together could offer profound benefits for studying the brain at high resolution.
Combining these technologies is challenging however because conventional metal electrode technologies are too thick(>500 nm) to be transparent to light making them incompatible with many optical approaches.
and quantifying neural network activity in the brain said Doug Weber DARPA program manager. The ability to simultaneously measure electrical activity on a large and fast scale with direct visualization and modulation of neuronal network anatomy could provide unprecedented insight into relationships between brain structure
and function and importantly how these relationships evolve over time or are perturbed by injury or disease.
but also through careful modulation of circuit activity enable exploration of causal relationships between neural signals and brain function.
and develop and validate models of brain circuit function. This knowledge could greatly aid how we understand
See-through sensors open new window into the brain More information: Graphene-based carbon-layered electrode array technology for neural imaging and optogenetic applications.
a two-dimensional form of carbon only one atom thick to fabricate a new type of microelectrode that solves a major problem for investigators looking to understand the intricate circuitry of the brain.
The team also notes that the single-electrode techniques used in the Nature Communications study could be adapted easily to study other larger areas of the brain with more expansive arrays.
and used Kuzum and her colleagues expect to gain greater insight into how the physiology of the brain can go awry.
That information may include the identification of specific marker waveforms of brain electrical activity that can be mapped spatially and temporally to individual neural circuits.
Nanogel-Based Immunologically Stealth Vaccine Targets Macrophages in the Medulla of Lymph node and Induces Potent Antitumor Immunity ACS Nano 2014 8 (9) pp 9209#9218.
#Research mimics brain cells to boost memory power RMIT University researchers have brought ultra-fast, nanoscale data storage within striking reach,
using technology that mimics the human brain. The researchers have built a novel nanostructure that offers a new platform for the development of highly stable and reliable nanoscale memory devices.
our work advances the search for next generation memory technology can replicate the complex functions of human neural system bringing us one step closer to the bionic brain."
and offer building blocks for computing that could be trained to mimic synaptic interfaces in the human brain n
And removing extra material just in case isn't a good option in the brain which controls so many critical processes.
and go specifically to tumor cells and not to normal brain cells. Using a handheld Raman scanner in a mouse model that mimics human GBM the researchers successfully identified
and removed all malignant cells in the rodents'brains. Also because the technique involves steps that have made already it to human testing for other purposes the researchers conclude that it has the potential to move readily into clinical trials.
Surgeons might be able to use the device in the future to treat other types of brain cancer they say.
and brain signaling with the potential to transform our understanding of how the brain worksnd how to treat its most devastating diseases.
ultraflexible electronics into the brain and allow them to become fully integrated with the existing biological web of neurons.
cheaper chips and computers inspired by biological brains in that they could perform many tasks at the same time.
To obtain medical information from a patient such as heart rate or brainwave data, stiff electrode objects are placed on several fixed locations on the patient's body.
#Branch-Like Dendrites Function As Minicomputers In The Brain A new paper in Nature suggests that we've been thinking about neurons all wrong.
Researchers from University college London the University of North carolina School of medicine found that in response to visual stimuli dendrites fired electrical signals in the brains of mice.
This multiplies the brain's processing power. It's the equivalent of finding out a bunch of wiring was really a set of transistors according to Smith.
The discovery could give us new insight into how the brain is wired. The study appears in Nature this week.
#Scientists'Eavesdrop'On A Brain A team of researchers from Stanford say they've created a system to eavesdrop on the brain allowing them to monitor a person's brain activity
#To make it happen the team removed parts of skull from three patients experiencing frequent drug-resistant epileptic seizures then attached a packet of electrodes to their exposed brains.
this is what was happening in their brain at that time.##As part of the study the researchers#also had the three patients go through an experiment:
a region of the brain known to light up when people are calculating called the#intraparietal sulcus was sparked.
That wasn't so surprising. The more unexpected#finding--and this is #what makes the researchers'technique different than other brain-monitoring tools--was showed that it how the#intraparietal sulcus#responds to more abstract calculative thoughts.
When the patients in conversation used a phrase like more than or#â##bigger than the other one the brain region also showed more activity.
Without being able to monitor a patient during the regular course of their day a connection#like that might not be so easily found.
in insects underlining the intimate link between brain behaviour and immunity u
#Gunk-Proof Everything Anyone who's worn waterproof boots knows that although they shed moisture they're magnets for grime.
People with Down syndrome usually have smaller brain volumes than control groups including significantly smaller cerebellums a portion of the brain involved in motor control.
After a single injection of SAG on the day the mice were born their cerebellums developed normally into adulthood.
when it comes to brain development so fiddling with it could have unintended consequences. It's possible enhancing the biochemical events that lead to growth in the brain would cause issues elsewhere in the body like potentially raising the risk of cancer.
Down syndrome is very complex and nobody thinks there's going to be a silver bullet that normalizes cognition Reeves said in a statement.
when the shark approches it's tiny little pea brain will say eeew i'm not eatin'that Expletive Deleted thing!
Long life though brain transplant into clones. Yes! I've always wanted to live long and prosper!
Long life though brain transplant into clones. Yes! I've always wanted to live long and prosper!
With brain-wasting disease in our deer and elk and steroidal enhanced deficiencies accumulating in our cows this bodes really well for U s as a nation huh?
and transmit them to the brain. The average person has three cones which enables him#to see about one million colors.#
Although tetrachromats have more receptors in their eyes their brains are wired the same way as a person with normal vision.
So how can a brain like Antico s change to see more colors? Like anything else practice makes perfect even
in order to better understand how their brains work. Jameson became fascinated with how people are able to form
This likely has to do with how the brain wires itself when it receives certain signals frequently over time#a concept called neuroplasticity.
because they haven t trained their brains to pay attention. Antico in this case presents a rare exception.
so her brain became wired to take advantage of her tetrachromacy.##Antico has a personal stake in the continued research of tetrachromacy.
With the help of these nanoscopes researchers have been able to visualize molecules such as those created in synapses in the brain.
Jonathan Viventi Builds Devices That Decode Thoughts Existing brain implants require individual electrodes to be wired to an external device for data processing.
Viventi s arrays contain transistors that enable the signals to be processed locally yet they're as thin and flexible as a sheet of cellophane conforming to the contours of the brain.
We can actually sample with extremely high resolution across a virtually unlimited area of the brain Viventi says.
In animal studies this enabled reseachers to recognize the subtle brain signals that seem to give rise to seizures#a capability#he hopes doctors can use to better understand epilepsy in humans.
Paralyzed Rats Walk Again, Now Farther Than Ever Like a severed telephone line (from back in the days when phones had wires) a spinal cord injury can cut off communication between the brain
Then the top array reads the electrical commands from the brain and beams them to the lower array.
and even brain cancer but the MIT researchers are the first to use them to combat antibiotic resistance.#
#Scientists Send Messages Directly From One Brain To Another So a team of neuroscientists sent a message from the brain of one person in India to the brains of three people in France using brainwave-reading equipment and the Internet.
and italics from the original paper#because they are awesome#wears an EEG cap on her scalp that records the electrical activity in her brain.
#Dorito from its wedge-shaped body and Cylon from its incredibly sophisticated robotic brain. Unlike most drones which have a pilot dictating their every move#by remote control the X-47b is largely autonomous calculating its flight paths.
#Squid Protein Could Help Brains'Talk'to Computers In the most advanced prosthetics--such as this crazy mind-controlled robotic arm--electronic hardware interfaces directly with nerves and muscles in the human body.
#Open Brain-Computer Interface: An Interview with Conor Russomanno Brain-computer interfacing (BCI) is a rapidly growing field that offers huge potential for many applications such as medical grade BCIS to help people with sensory-motor disabilities.
Currently a number of researchers are developing more affordable BCI systems designed to address a wider range of neurotherapeutic applications.
and research developer of Openbci a low-cost open-source hardware platform that records the brain#s electrical signals and uses devices and software languages to make the data easily accessible.
and having the frequency of the flashing induce a similar frequency in the brain and then telling the robot to turn left.#
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