{"id":22731,"date":"2015-08-04T11:25:20","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T15:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=22731"},"modified":"2015-08-04T12:49:38","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T16:49:38","slug":"a-new-way-to-study-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2015\/08\/04\/a-new-way-to-study-the-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Way to Study the Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Innovative imaging could provide insight into brain growth and function<\/h4>\n
\n

\"Narayanan<\/p>\n

Narayanan \u201cBobby\u201d Kasthuri, a BU School of Medicine assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology, describes a new brain imaging technique in Cell. Photo by Janice Checcio<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Around the turn of the 20th century, a Spanish neuroscientist named Santiago Ram\u00f3n y Cajal created intricate images of intertwined neurons that changed brain science forever. His exquisite illustrations helped scientists understand some fundamental facts about the brain, namely that long-armed neurons\u2014communicating over gaps called synapses\u2014are the basic unit of our nervous system.<\/p>\n

Now, a team of Boston scientists, working with funding from the National Institutes of Health<\/a> (NIH), the National Science Foundation<\/a> (NSF), and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute<\/a> (HHMI), among others, has created a new system for imaging and analyzing neurons on a much finer scale, one they hope will produce insights into everything from developing brains to devastating mental disorders. Details of the system, as well as their analysis of a sliver of mouse cortex, were published in the July 30, 2015, edition of the journal Cell<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe complexity of the brain is much more than what we had ever imagined,\u201d says study first author Narayanan \u201cBobby\u201d Kasthuri<\/a>, a Boston University School of Medicine assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology, who co-authored the Cell<\/em> paper with Jeff Lichtman<\/a> of Harvard University. \u201cWe had this clean idea of how there\u2019s a really nice order to how neurons connect with each other, but if you actually look at the material it\u2019s not like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work overturns a longstanding assumption, known as \u201cPeter\u2019s Rule,\u201d that if two neurons are close to each other, they are likely to form synapses that allow them to communicate. It seems logical, but, Kasthuri learned, it turns out to be false, at least in this particular part of mouse brain, a piece of cortex that receives sensory information from whiskers.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because two neurons spend a lot of time together doesn\u2019t mean they make a connection,\u201d says Kasthuri. \u201cNow, that\u2019s the rule for this part of the brain in an adult mammal. It could be that in different parts of the brain, or in a baby\u2019s brain, every neuron is connecting to its neighbors. That\u2019s why we want to do this imaging in other brains and in a baby\u2019s brain\u2014that\u2019s how we\u2019ll figure this out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"high-resolution<\/a>
A high-resolution image of two adjacent neurons, one colored in green and one in blue. The numbered areas, in yellow, are synapses\u2014gaps where the neurons communicate via chemicals called neurotransmitters. \u201cEvery neuron has thousands of places to synapse with another,\u201d says Kasthuri. \u201cWhy does it keep choosing the same ones?\u201d Photo courtesy of Kasthuri, et al. \/\u00a0Cell<\/em> 2015<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The imaging system contains both hardware, which slices and photographs brain samples, and software that analyzes the data. The patented hardware, developed by Kasthuri and scientists at Harvard, is called ATUM, for automated tape collecting ultra-microtome. It uses a diamond knife to cut stained, plasticized samples of brain tissue into 30-nanomenter slices, then collects and photographs the samples with an electron microscope and stores the data. The scientists used a program called VAST, developed by co-author Daniel Berger<\/a> of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to analyze the data, creating vivid color images of neurons at the level of individual synapses.<\/p>\n

The cost and data storage demands for this research are still high, but the researchers expect expenses to drop over time, just as it has for genome sequencing. To facilitate data sharing, the scientists are partnering with Argonne National Laboratory<\/a> and hoping to create a national brain laboratory that neuroscientists worldwide can access within the next few years. Kasthuri likens the idea to the Human Genome Project, an undertaking that spawned new insights and technology, but also criticism.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome scientists have a fundamental problem with this type of work because it\u2019s not hypothesis-driven,\u201d says Kasthuri. \u201cWe want to collect a huge data set and then look for patterns. And we think it will pay off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as data is showing you things that are unexpected, then you\u2019re definitely doing the right thing,\u201d says senior study author Lichtman. \u201cAnd we are certainly far from being out of the surprise element. There\u2019s never a time when we look at this data that we don\u2019t see something that we\u2019ve never seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story originally appeared on the BU Research website and was written by Barbara Moran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new imaging tool developed by BUSM\u2019s Narayanan \u201cBobby\u201d Kasthuri, MD, an assistant professor in the department of anatomy and neurobiology, could do for the brain what the telescope did for space exploration. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[91,90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22731"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22760,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22731\/revisions\/22760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}