Wellcome Image of the Month: Celebration of the brain. Recently, the Wellcome Trust supported a play called 2401 Objects. It tells the story of Henry Molaison, who suffered from epilepsy and underwent experimental surgery in an attempt to cure his frequent and often disruptive seizures. Unbeknown to Henry at the time, the operation was set to become one of the most influential case studies in the history of neuroscience research. Patient HM, as Henry later became known within the research community, provided a rare but hugely powerful insight into the cognitive and neural organisation of memory, both experimentally and theoretically. So, with a new academic term on the horizon – a time when we all need some gentle memory jogging to remember what we were actually working on pre-holiday – we thought it only appropriate to highlight this historical representation of the brain as our Image of the Month for September, and in doing so capture the story of one of the most famous brains in neuroscience.
Henry died on December 2nd 2008. Like this: Brainmusic: fmri into musical sound. » Brain Scans Predict Pop Music Hits. Looking For Early Signs Of Autism In Brain Waves. Hide captionAn infant and his mother demonstrate electroencephalography, or EEG, technology at Children's Hospital Boston. The technology could help detect the risk of autism in infants. Courtesy of Michael Carroll A technology that monitors electrical activity in the brain could help identify infants who will go on to develop autism, scientists say. The technology, known as electroencephalography, or EEG, is also providing hints about precisely how autism affects the brain and which therapies are likely to help children with autism spectrum disorders. "Right now, the earliest we can reliably identify a child is, say, 3 years of age," says Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School.
"Our work is designed to see [if we] can we do that in early infancy, long before any signs or symptoms of autism are apparent in the child's behavior. " Looking For Autism Markers In Brain Signals Trouble Integrating The Senses. New technique to see neurons of the deep brain for months at a time developed. Travel just one millimeter inside the brain and you'll be stepping into the dark. Standard light microscopes don't allow researchers to look into the interior of the living brain, where memories are formed and diseases such as dementia and cancer can take their toll.
But Stanford scientists have devised a new method that not only lets them peer deep inside the brain to examine its neurons but also allows them to continue monitoring for months. The technique promises to improve understanding of both the normal biology and diseased states of this hidden tissue. Other recent advances in micro-optics had enabled scientists to take a peek at cells of the deep brain, but their observations captured only a momentary snapshot of the microscopic changes that occur over months and years with aging and illness. The Stanford development appears online Jan. 16 in the journal Nature Medicine.
It also will appear in the February 2011 print edition. The severity of glioma tumors depends on their location. Researchers develop ‘camera’ that will show your mind. Among the great enigmas of human existence, few have proven so intractable as the human brain. Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran says our current understanding of the body's most complex organ approximates what we knew about chemistry in the 19th century: in short, not much. On a scale of 100, estimates Toronto psychiatrist Colin Shapiro, our comprehension of how the brain actually functions ranks at a lowly 2. Now, two Toronto doctors, a general practitioner and a medical biophysicist, are laying claim to a research innovation that could expand our knowledge exponentially. Using one of the earliest imaging technologies, the electroencephalograph (EEG), Mark Doidge and Joseph Mocanu have written software that creates dynamic, real-time, three-dimensional colour movies of the brain.
If their research is validated, it could revolutionize neuroscience - and, not incidentally, make them a fortune. "We usually think of cameras as looking out at the world," Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. That, conceded Dr. FUCK YEAH NERVOUS SYSTEM. “Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”