Lighting the Brain

[Disir]

On a recent Friday morning, a gray-haired woman whom I will call Sally arrived for an appointment with Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and a neuroscientist in the bioengineering department at Stanford University. Sally, now in her sixties, had suffered since childhood from major depression, and had tried the standard treatments: counselling, medication, even electroconvulsive therapy. Nothing helped. She had spent much of her adult life in bed, and had twice attempted suicide. Seven years ago, she was referred to Deisseroth, who uses a combination of unusual medications and brain stimulation to treat autism and severe depression. He accepts only patients for whom all other treatments have failed.

On Deisseroth’s advice, a surgeon implanted beneath Sally’s left collarbone a small, battery-powered device that regularly sends bursts of electricity into the vagus nerve, which carries the signal into a deep-brain structure that doctors think regulates mood. Originally developed for epilepsy, vagus-nerve stimulation (VNS) has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the kind of treatment-resistant depression from which Sally suffers, but the exact reason for its effectiveness is not understood. Sally says that VNS has transformed her life, and that, apart from one period of “going pancake,” she has experienced just a few “dips.”

She seemed to be in one of those dips when she took a seat facing Deisseroth. “There’s just so much going on,” she said. She had recently suffered a blackout, which her physician thought might be related to a drop in blood pressure, and she had decided, reluctantly, to stop driving until she understood why it had happened. Walking was hard, too; she was scheduled to have knee surgery soon, but it frightened her.

“Well, that’s a lot to think about,” Deisseroth said. He spoke quietly but with a positive lilt, countering the downward tug of Sally’s mood. “Not super-low blood pressure,” he said, scanning her chart. “So that’s actually not as concerning as I thought.” Of her decision to suspend driving, he said, “That is smart while it’s being figured out.” He added, “You’re still socializing, I see—which is very important.”

She was not mollified. “Mood’s been down,” she said. “Just spiralling down.” She mentioned insomnia, bad dreams, low appetite.

“No suicidal thoughts?” he asked.

“Mmm, no,” she said. With sudden urgency, she asked to have the VNS current increased: “Can we please go up to 1.5?” She had been receiving 1.2 milliamps every five minutes for thirty seconds, but was no longer able to feel the effects.

“You’re tolerating the device very well,” Deisseroth said, after some discussion. “I think we can go up a little.”

He handed her a programming wand, which looked a little like a Wii remote. She placed the broad, flat end against her left collarbone, over the implant. Deisseroth took from his desk what appeared to be a smartphone—a controller for the wand—and thumbed the screen as if tapping out a text. The wand emitted a trilling tone. “I can feel it,” she said.

“But you’re not coughing,” he said. “That’s good.”

Problems with the throat are not the only side effects of VNS.

The Optogenetics Breakthrough - The New Yorker

This is cool. And kinda creepy. I guess you have to fail with everything else though.

 

[G.T.]

Seems like you either build a tolerance to it, or it wears down the portion that is electrified, physically. Not promising for long term, it doesnt sound like.

 

[waltky]

Granny says Uncle Ferd needs a brain transplant...

Scaffold allows scientists to grow brain cells for transplants
March 17, 2016 - Functioning neural cells could be grown and transplanted into human brains, suggesting a new treatment for neurodegenerative disorders is on the horizon.

Scientists developed a scaffold that allows them to grow functional human neurons, which could lead to injections of fresh brain cells as part of treatment for neurodegenerative conditions. The 3D micro-scaffold developed at Rutgers University and Stanford University allows scientists to turn reprogrammed stem cells into neuronal networks, more of which survived when injected into mouse brains than previous efforts at brain cell replacement.

Individual cells injected into brains don't have a high survival rate, but scientists found that injecting cells that formed neural connections while growing on the scaffold significantly increased the number that survived. "If you can transplant cells in a way that mimics how these cells are already configured in the brain, then you're one step closer to getting the brain to communicate with the cells that you're now transplanting," Dr. Prabhas Moghe, research director at the School of Engineering and Health Sciences Partnerships at Rutgers University in a press release. "In this work, we've done that by providing cues for neurons to rapidly network in 3D."

Human neurons on a 3D scaffold designed to help the cells form neuronal networks to be injected into patients exhibit firing activity, seen in yellow, in response to electrical current.​

For the study, published in Nature Communications, scientists designed a scaffold, made of webbed polymer strands, that is about 100 micrometers wide. Scientists then seeded the scaffold with pluripotent stem cells created from adult skin cells and induced to differentiate into neural cells. As they grew, the cells produced outgrowths, linking them to one another, allowing them to transmit and receive neural signals. The tiny neural networks were then injected into slices of mouse brain, as were individual neural cells, with the scientists finding cells in the networks were about 3.5 times more likely to survive than isolated, solo cells. When the scaffolds were injected into the brains of live mice, scientists found the tiny networks increased cell survival by 38 times over isolated cells.

The next step will be fine-tuning the scaffolds and finding ways to differentiate stem cells into specific types of brain cell, with the specific goal of developing a treatment for Parkinson's disease, according to the National Institutes of Health. Although the method of growing new cells is promising, an actual treatment for Parkinson's or any other condition using the scaffold-grown cells is likely 10 to 20 years away, the scientists said.

Scaffold allows scientists to grow brain cells for transplants

 

[waltky]

New brain map lays out cerebral cortex...

Mind over gray matter: new map lays out brain's cerebral cortex
July 20, 2016 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Neuroscientists acting as cartographers of the human mind have devised the most comprehensive map ever made of the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions such as abstract thought, language and memory.

Using MRI images from the brains of 210 people, the researchers said on Wednesday they were able to pinpoint 180 distinct areas in the cerebral cortex, the brain's thin, wrinkly outermost layer made of so-called gray matter. These areas were present in both the left and right hemispheres of the cerebral cortex. More than half, 97 of them, were previously unknown. The researchers nailed down the specific function of some of the areas, but said they were only scratching the surface on understanding what all of the areas did. The map could assist in the study of brain maladies such as autism, schizophrenia, dementia and epilepsy, and shed light on the differences between the brains of people with such conditions and healthy people, the researchers said.

A 180-area multimodal human cortical parcellation on the left and right hemisphere surfaces of the human brain is pictured in this handout image​

Neuroscientist Matthew Glasser of Washington University in St. Louis, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, said the map also may be useful in neurosurgery, helping surgeons avoid damaging important brain areas involved in speech or movement. "The cerebral cortex underlies most of human cognition, providing such functions as speech production and understanding, ability to use tools, ability to make decisions, et cetera," Glasser said. "Indeed, it is responsible for the stuff that makes us human, and the cortex has expanded dramatically in humans relative to our closest living relatives, the apes." The regions were mapped based on features such as cortical thickness and the amount of insulation, called myelin, around nerve-cell connections.

A map of myelin content (red, yellow are high myelin; indigo and blue are low myelin) in the left hemisphere of cerebral cortex is pictured in this handout image​

The researchers also used MRI data on cortical activity when people carry out tasks such as listening to stories, computing math problems and looking at other people making various facial expressions. "We consider this to be the most accurate and detailed map of human cerebral cortex published to date," Washington University neuroscientist David Van Essen said. German neurologist Korbinian Brodmann published a landmark first map of the cerebral cortex in 1909. Glasser said the new one also will not be the last word on the subject. "Think of this as version 1.0 of the brain map. It is very likely that better data or more eyes on the problem will identify improvements, perhaps for a version 2.0 in the future," Glasser said.

Mind over gray matter: new map lays out brain's cerebral cortex