#US Congress Curbs NSA Surveillance, Sends Bill to Obama The US Senate passed landmark legislation Tuesday that ends the government's bulk telephone data dragnet,
#This Injectable Brain Implant Can Record and Stimulate Individual Neurons For those who need them most,
brain implants have made inspiring strides in recent years. One implant eases the involuntary tremors associated with Parkinson disease.
Another allows completely paralyzed patients to manipulate robotic arms. This is amazing stuffut it only a rough draft of the future.
Most implants are still sizable relative to the brain, many are rigid, and all require invasive surgery.
"and spacious, allowing it to naturally incorporate into the brain and invite nearby cells to organize
Rafael Yuste, director of Columbia University's Neurotechnology Center, told Nature it"left a few of us with our jaws dropping"after a 2014 presentation.
and injected through a hole into the brain. This makes the procedure less invasive than current techniques.
and drapes onto the brain undulating surface. Nanowires connecting the mesh with computers in the outside world can either record brain activity
or stimulate nearby neurons. The team has tested 16-component implants on mice. They recorded and stimulated individual neurons,
and found no indication of an immune responsehat is did, the body not reject themfter five weeks. xisting techniques are crude relative to the way the brain is wired,
Lieber says. ut with our injectable electronics, it as if it not there at all. They are one million times more flexible than any state-of-the-art flexible electronics
and have sub-cellular feature sizes. Theye what I call euro-philic? they actually like to interact with neurons.
In the future, the team hopes to make the device wireless and scale it up to include hundreds of elements and multiple types of sensors.
One such sensor, for example, might be a airpin-shapednanowire able to measure electrical activity both inside and outside neurons.
The potential power of less-invasive, more targeted brain implants and interfaces is significant. On the one hand, just as brain imaging technology has deepened our understanding of how the brain works,
implants measuring neurons in vivo can make that picture even more detailed and complete. Such research may provide valuable insights into the causes of brain disease and how the brain processes informationpening the door for reverse engineering certain processes in computers,
to make them more efficient and, when practical, to allow them to think creatively and make sense of the world more like us.
Also better brain implants may prove powerful therapeutic toolshether easing the symptoms of Parkinson or restoring a degree of freedom to those suffering paralysis. And more.)
And of course, the less invasive, the better. As the risk profile decreases, the technology will make sense for more patients.
Naam calls this the DOS era for brain implants. But as devices shrink, become less invasive
In findings that may lead to new treatments for cognitive disorders, researchers at MIT Picower Institute for Learning and Memory zero in on how the brain forms memories of
In a paper appearing this week in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience, a research team led by Mark Bear,
the Picower Professor of Neuroscience, showed that dramatic changes occur in the primary visual cortex when mice learn to distinguish novel from familiar visual stimuli.
Manipulations that prevented the changes in visual cortex also blocked memory formation. Impairments in detecting and recognizing familiar visual elements
and how the brain changes as learning occurs something that has been very difficult to achieve.
synaptic transmission was changed in the primary visual cortex. Preventing or reversing this synaptic plasticity in visual cortex left the animals unable to distinguish familiar and novel visual stimuli.
Previously, the primary visual cortex was seen as a irst responderto visual stimuli that quickly passes information along to higher-order brain regions for interpretation
and memory storage. he study points to the visual cortex as a tool of learning and memory in its own right,
capable of storing simple but fundamentally important memories, Cooke says. ur work provides great hope for the future as it suggests we may have the chance to directly observe neurons undergo lasting changes as a very simple
and experimentally constrained memory is formed. Bear anticipates that the results will surprise neuroscientists. e find that,
contrary to the dogma that the primary visual cortex is relatively immutable in adults, a form of visual experience induces synaptic modifications in this area,
and these modifications are necessary for a type of visual recognition memory. Source: MIT/Picower Institute for Learning and Memor t
#New high-speed 3-D microscope gives deeper view of living things Opening new doors for biomedical and neuroscience research, Elizabeth Hillman,
and neuroscience research, says Hillman, who is also a member of Columbia Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. ith SCAPE,
we can now image complex, living things, such as neurons firing in the rodent brain, crawling fruit fly larvae,
and single cells in the zebrafish heart while the heart is actually beating spontaneouslyhis has not been possible until now.
Highly aligned with the goals of President Obama BRAIN INITIATIVE, SCAPE is a variation on light-sheet imaging,
even delivering neurons that flash as they fire in the living brain. Yet imaging techniques that can capture these dizzying dynamic processes have lagged behind.
acquiring enough of these layers to form a 3d image at fast enough rates to capture events like neurons actually firing has become a frustrating road-block.
Hillman and her collaborators have used already the system to observe firing in 3d neuronal dendritic trees in superficial layers of the mouse brain.
Beyond neuroscience, Hillman sees many future applications of SCAPE including imaging cellular replication, function, and motion in intact tissues, 3d cell cultures,
As a member of the new Zuckerman Institute and the Kavli Institute for Brain science at Columbia, Hillman is working with a wide range of collaborators,
including Randy Bruno (associate professor of neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience), Richard Mann (Higgins Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics), Wesley Grueber (associate professor
of physiology and cellular biophysics and of neuroscience, Department of Physiology & Cell Biophysics), and Kimara Targoff (assistant professor of pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics), all of whom are starting to use the SCAPE system in their research. eciphering the functions of brain
and mind demands improved methods for visualizing, monitoring, and manipulating the activity of neural circuits in natural settings,
says Thomas M. Jessell, co-director of the Zuckerman Institute and Claire Tow Professor of Motor neuron Disorders,
the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia. illman sophistication in optical physics has led her to develop a new imaging technique that permits large-scale detection of neuronal firing in three-dimensional
brain tissues. This methodological advance offers the potential to unlock the secrets of brain activity in ways barely imaginable a few years ago.
Hillman technology is available for licensing from Columbia Technology Ventures and has attracted already interest from multiple companies
#Single brain peptide could be the clue to improving fertility post-stress Infertility is a growing problem in the developed world,
and professor in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of Montreal. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease that is characterized by paralysis, numbness, loss of vision,
In Canada, nearly 75,000 people have MS. The brain is protected normally from attacks by the blood-brain barrier.
The blood-brain barrier prevents immune cells lymphocytes from entering the central nervous system. In people with MS there is often leakage.
They attack the brain by destroying the myelin sheath that protects neurons, resulting in decreased transmission of nerve impulses,
and plaque formation. In 2008, Dr. Prat team identified a cell adhesion molecule, called MCAM (Melanoma Cell adhesion molecule),
The neurovascular unit is made up of blood vessels and smooth muscles under the control of autonomic neurons.
how autonomic neurons and blood vessels come together to form the neurovascular unit. The study is published May 21 by Stem Cell Reports. his new model allows us to follow the fate of distinct cell types during development,
and autonomic neurons, which influence the smooth muscle ability to contract and maintain vascular tone. The study revealed that separate signals produced by endothelial cells
and smooth muscle cells are required for embryonic cells to differentiate into autonomic neurons. The researchers discovered that endothelial cells secrete nitric oxide,
specialized embryonic cells that give rise to portions of the nervous system and other organs. The combination of endothelial cell nitric oxide and the T-cadherin interaction is sufficient to coax neural crest cells into becoming autonomic neurons
where they can then co-align with developing blood vessels. In addition to answering longstanding questions about human development and improving the odds that scientists will one day be able to generate artificial organs from stem cells,
this new insight on the autonomic nervous system also has implications for rare inherited conditions such as neurofibromatosis,
tuberous sclerosis and Hirschsprung disease. hese observations may help to explain certain human disease syndromes in which abnormalities of the nervous system appear to be associated, for previously unclear reasons,
Specifically, stem cell scientists at Mcmaster can now directly convert adult human blood cells to both central nervous system (brain
and spinal cord) neurons as well as neurons in the peripheral nervous system (rest of the body) that are responsible for pain, temperature and itch perception.
This means that how a person nervous system cells react and respond to stimuli, can be determined from his blood.
The peripheral nervous system is made up of different types of nerves some are mechanical (feel pressure) and others detect temperature (heat).
In extreme conditions, pain or numbness is perceived by the brain using signals sent by these peripheral nerves. he problem is that unlike blood, a skin sample or even a tissue biopsy,
and make the main cell types of neurological systems the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system in a dish that is specialized for each patient,
said Bhatia. obody has done ever this with adult blood. Ever. e can actually take a patient blood sample
We can also make central nervous system cells, as the blood to neural conversion technology we developed creates neural stem cells during the process of conversion. is team revolutionary,
patented direct conversion technology has road and immediate applications, said Bhatia, adding that it allows researchers to start asking questions about understanding disease and improving treatments such as:
me would target the peripheral nervous system neurons, but do nothing to the central nervous system, thus avoiding nonaddictive drug side effects,
said Bhatia. ou don want to feel sleepy or unaware, you just want your pain to go away.
and required technology to actually test different drugs to find something that targets the peripheral nervous system and not the central nervous system in a patient specific,
or neuropathy to run tests on neurons created from blood samples of patients taken in past clinical trials where responses
me great pleasure to be part of the solution for improving paralyzed patientslives. part of the brain that controls intuitive movement planning could be key to improving motor control in paralyzed patients with prostheticsneural prosthetic devices
implanted in the brain movement center, the motor cortex, can allow patients with amputations or paralysis to control the movement of a robotic limb one that can be connected
Now, by implanting neuroprosthetics in a part of the brain that controls not the movement directly but rather our intent to move,
The results of the trial, led by principal investigator Richard Andersen, the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience,
recognizing someone you know) that is first processed in the lower visual areas of the cerebral cortex. The signal then moves up to a high-level cognitive area known as the posterior parietal cortex (PPC.
Here, the initial intent to make a movement is formed. These intentions are transmitted then to the motor cortex, through the spinal cord,
and on to the arms and legs where the movement is executed. High spinal cord injuries can cause quadriplegia in some patients
because movement signals cannot get from the brain to the arms and legs. As a solution, earlier neuroprosthetic implants used tiny electrodes to detect
and record movement signals at their last stop before reaching the spinal cord: the motor cortex. The recorded signal is carried then via wire bundles from the patient brain to a computer,
where it is translated into an instruction for a robotic limb. However, because the motor cortex normally controls many muscles,
the signals tend to be detailed and specific. The Caltech group wanted to see if the simpler intent to shake the hand could be used to control the prosthetic limb,
instead of asking the subject to concentrate on each component of the handshake a more painstaking and less natural approach.
Andersen and his colleagues wanted to improve the versatility of movement that a neuroprosthetic can offer by recording signals from a different brain region the PPC. he PPC is earlier in the pathway
so signals there are more related to movement planning what you actually intend to do rather than the details of the movement execution,
Our future studies will investigate ways to combine the detailed motor cortex signals with more cognitive PPC signals to take advantage of each area specializations. n the clinical trial,
Each array contains 96 active electrodes that, in turn, each record the activity of a single neuron in the PPC.
And that is exactly what we would expect from this area of the brain. his better understanding of the PPC will help the researchers improve neuroprosthetic devices of the future,
Andersen says. hat we have here is a unique window into the workings of a complex high-level brain area as we work collaboratively with our subject to perfect his skill in controlling external devices.?
Direct brain control of robots and computers has the potential to dramatically change the lives of many people,
says that advancements in prosthetics like these hold promise for the future of patient rehabilitation. e at Rancho are dedicated to advancing rehabilitation through new assistive technologies, such as robotics and brain-machine interfaces.
The key is to be able to provide particular types of sensory feedback from the robotic arm to the brain.
The newest devices under development by Andersen and his colleagues feature a mechanism to relay signals from the robotic arm back into the part of the brain that gives the perception of touch. he reason we are developing these devices is that normally a quadriplegic patient couldn,
which is inspired loosely by the neural circuitry of the human brain when it perceives and interacts with the world.
which layers of artificial neurons process overlapping raw sensory data, whether it is sound waves or image pixels.
#ain sensinggene discovery could help in development of new methods of pain relief A gene essential to the production of pain-sensing neurons in humans has been identified by an international team of researchers co-led by the University
The team looked at nerve biopsies taken from the patients to see what had gone wrong and found that particular pain-sensing neurons were absent.
From these clinical features of the disease, the team predicted that there would be a block to the production of pain-sensing neurons during the development of the embryo they confirmed this using a combination of studies in mouse and frog models,
As chromatin is particularly important during formation of particular specialised cell types such as neurons, this provides a possible explanation for why pain-sensing neurons do not form properly in the CIP patients. he ability to sense pain is essential to our self-preservation,
yet we understand far more about excessive pain than we do about lack of pain perception,
researchers from the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics demonstrated in mice that traces of old memories do remain in the amnestic brain,
led by Susumu Tonegawa, Director of the RIKEN Brain science Institute in Saitama, Japan, was interested in how stable memories are formed in the brain and whether memories
whose storage was disrupted by chemically inducing retrograde amnesia, could still be recalled. rain researchers have been divided for decades on
Neurons activated during memory formation were labeled genetically to allow their visualization and reactivation. Then some mice were given a chemical, anisomycin,
the researchers used optogenetic technology to selectively activate neurons that were labeled genetically during their training in chamber A with a blue light-sensitive protein,
during the training period, brain connections between unique memory engrams in neighboring brain structures may be strengthened
Indeed, they observed that connectivity was enhanced between memory engram cells in the fear memory-holding amygdala and context memory-holding hippocampus of amnestic mice,
#Injectable electronics New system holds promise for basic neuroscience, treatment of neurodegenerative diseasesit a notion that might be pulled from the pages of science-fiction novel electronic devices that can be injected directly into the brain,
the scaffolds can be used to monitor neural activity, stimulate tissues and even promote regenerations of neurons.
The study is described in a June 8 paper in Nature Nanotechnology. Contributing to the work were Jia Liu, Tian-Ming Fu, Zengguang Cheng, Guosong Hong, Tao Zhou, Lihua Jin, Madhavi Duvvuri, Zhe Jiang, Peter
when cardiac or nerve cells were grown with embedded scaffolds. Researchers were then able to use the devices to record electrical signals generated by the tissues,
-or neuro-stimulating drugs. e were able to demonstrate that we could make this scaffold and culture cells within it,
if you want to study the brain or develop the tools to explore the brain-machine interface,
you need to stick something into the body. When releasing the electronics scaffold completely from the fabrication substrate,
'hough not the first attempts at implanting electronics into the brain deep brain stimulation has been used to treat a variety of disorders for decades the nano-fabricated scaffolds operate on a completely different scale. xisting techniques are crude relative
to the way the brain is wired, Lieber explained. hether it a silicon probe or flexible polymershey cause inflammation in the tissue that requires periodically changing the position or the stimulation.
Theye what I call euro-philicthey actually like to interact with neurons..espite their enormous potential, the fabrication of the injectable scaffolds is surprisingly easy. hat the beauty of this it compatible with conventional manufacturing techniques,
or record neural activity. hese type of things have never been done before, from both a fundamental neuroscience and medical perspective,
researchers hope to better understand how the brain and other tissues react to the injectable electronics over longer periods.
or even from specific neurons over an extended period of time this could, I think, make a huge impact on neuroscience. ource:
Eurekaler f
#Nanomaterial Self-Assembly Imaged In real time A team of researchers from UC San diego, Florida State university and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories has visualized for the first time the growth of anoscalechemical complexes in real time,
m. GFP (green) indicates neocortical neurons and TH (red) indicates mda neurons. In the lower picture, each type has been tagged with fluorescent markers
so that the locations and types can be identified. The fine tendrils indicate the growth of synapses between the neocortical
and mda neurons, mimicking the structures found in vivo. Opens up new avenues of research into human neuronal systems and interconnections,
according to Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience reporthuman stem cells can be differentiated to produce other cell types, such as organ cells, skin cells, or brain cells.
While organ cells, for example can function in isolation, brain cells require synapses, or connectors, between cells and between regions of the brain.
In a new study published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, researchers report successfully growing multiple brain structures
and forming connections between them in vitro, in a single culture vessel, for the first time. e have developed a human pluripotent stem cell (hpsc)- based system for producing connections between neurons from two brain regions,
the neocortex and midbrain, explained lead investigator Chun-Ting Lee, Ph d.,working in the laboratory of William J. Freed, Ph d.,of the Intramural Research Program,
National Institute on Drug abuse, National institutes of health, in Baltimore. Mesencephalic dopaminergic (mda) neurons and their connections to other neurons in the brain are believed to be related to disorders including drug abuse, schizophrenia, Parkinson disease,
and perhaps eating disorders, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, Tourette syndrome, and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. However, studying mda neurons and neocortical neurons in isolation does not reveal much data about how these cells actually interact in these conditions.
This new capability to grow and interconnect two types of neurons in vitro now provides researchers with an excellent model for further study. his method,
therefore, has the potential to expand the potential of hpsc-derived neurons to allow for studies of human neural systems
and interconnections that have previously not been possible to model in vitro, commented Lee. Using a special container called an bidi wound healing dish,
which contains two chambers separated by a removable barrier, the researchers used hpsc to grow mda neurons and neocortical neurons in the two individual chambers.
The barrier was removed after colonies of both types of cells had formed and further growth resulted in the formation of synapses between neurons from each colony.
Future experiments could employ modifications of this method to examine connections between any two brain regions
or neuronal subtypes that can be produced from hpscs in vitro. Source: Eurekaler c
#Tumour in a petri dish a way to a personalized cancer treatment Cancer is still one of those diagnoses that make people weak in their knees
and sometimes change the course of patient life. Sometimes it takes even more. That is why innovative cancer treatments are always in the spotlight of attention
more effective Brain surgery is famously difficult for good reason: When removing a tumor, for example, neurosurgeons walk a tightrope as they try to take out as much of the cancer as possible
while keeping crucial brain tissue intact and visually distinguishing the two is often impossible. Now Johns Hopkins researchers report they have developed an imaging technology that could provide surgeons with a color-coded map of a patient brain showing
which areas are and are not cancer. A summary of the research appears June 17 in Science Translational Medicine. s a neurosurgeon,
neuroscience and oncology at the Johns hopkins university School of medicine and the clinical leader of the research team. e think optical coherence tomography has strong potential for helping surgeons know exactly where to cut.
thought OCT might provide a solution to the problem of separating brain cancers from other tissue during surgery.
Eventually, the researchers figured out that a second special property of brain cancer cells that they lack the so-called myelin sheaths that coat healthy brain cells had a greater effect on the OCT readings than did density.
Once they had found the characteristic OCT ignatureof brain cancer, the team devised a computer algorithm to process OCT data and,
the team has tested the system on fresh human brain tissue removed during surgeries and in surgeries to remove brain tumors from mice.
#Specific roles of adult neural stem cells may be determined before birth UCSF-led study in mice suggest that stem cells in the brain may not be able to develop into many different cell types,
Adult neural stem cells, which are thought commonly of as having the ability to develop into many type of brain cells,
are preprogrammed in reality before birth to make very specific types of neurons, at least in mice, according to a study led by UC San francisco researchers. his work fundamentally changes the way we think about stem cells,
said principal investigator Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, UCSF professor of neurological surgery, Heather and Melanie Muss Endowed Chair and a principal investigator in the UCSF Brain tumor Research center and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. t may be unwelcome
news for those who thought of adult neural stem cells as having a wide potential for neural repair.
and repair. eople have assumed that adult neural stem cells are undifferentiated similarly and self-renewing, said Alvarez-Buylla,
whose lab was the first to identify neural stem cells more than 20 years ago. e did not see that. n mouse brains,
as in human brains, adult neural stem cells reside on the walls of cavities called ventricles, which are filled with cerebrospinal fluid.
Using sophisticated DNA tagging techniques, Alvarez-Buylla and his team traced the development of mouse adult neural stem cells back to their embryonic progenitors.
They found that most neural stem cells are produced when the mouse embryo is between 13 and 15 days old,
uite early in embryonic brain development, said Alvarez-Buylla, and then remain quiescent until reactivated later in life.
Moreover, they found that the precise type of neuron that each adult neural stem cell can later develop into is determined by its location on the ventricle Wall in turn
that location is fixed even earlier in embryonic development, as early as 11 days. o, in this study, we were met with a series of surprises,
it turns out that their role in the brain has been determined partly already before birth. he researchers had another surprise,
the scientists found that the mouse adult neural stem cells they studied are derived from embryonic neural stem cells that produce neurons in entirely different parts of the brain. his means that, somehow,
these cells go through a period of neuron production for the embryonic brain and then switch to a different mode and produce cells that get set apart to become adult neural cell progenitors,
said Alvarez-Buylla. hat is incredible is that the neurons that are produced in the embryo are extremely different than the neurons produced for the adult.
mouse brains have long been accepted as excellent basic research models for the human brain, he said.
Alvarez-Buylla also noted that the paper has possible implications for the success of human stem cell therapy in the brain
and nervous system. ne implication for humans has to do with the fact that so many different progenitor cells are needed to make the different types of neurons,
he said. hile it is true that we are learning how to reprogram adult stem cells to make different types of neurons,
if we don understand the embryology of the brain, going back to the origins of specific nerve cell types,
the likelihood of our being able to use stem cell therapy to repair brain injury is very low. ource:
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