Microscopist Phillipp Keller and neurobiologist Misha Ahrens developed a system that records activity of individual neurons across a fish brain. It is the first time that researchers have been able to capture a brain at the single cell level. The fish that the system works with is a genetically engineered zebrafish. The fish's neuron make a protein that fluoresces when there are varying concentrations of calcium ions. a detector captures the signals while a microscope sends sheets of light through the fish's brain. The system records activity every 1.3 seconds. Ahrens and Keller have used light-sheet misroscopy before to image developing embryos and modified the light detectors in this study. Each experiment generated 1 terabyte of data which enables the researchers to see neurons in distinct regions that correlate to their activity. There are limitations, however. One limitation is that the technique works best in zebrafish because the embryos are transparent. Another limitation is that the system does not work fast enough to tell whether a neuron fired once are several times. The study will enable researchers to understand how different regions work together in the brain. The system could explain how the brain coordinates movement, consolidates learning, and processes sights and smells.NOS Themes:
- Science is collaborative.
- Science is based on evidence.
- Role of motivation and curiosity.
Article:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=flashing-fish-brains-filmed-in-action
Related Article:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/anatomy/brain/Neuron.shtml
I think that this is a very interesting subject because it is the start of unraveling the brain. Although currently the scientists are using zebrafish brains, in the future the test may become perfected and tried on humans. It is amazing that this is the first time researchers have been able to capture a brain at the single cell level because there is some much technology today that you would think this would've been done earlier, even though it is extremely complex. I hope the scientists can perfect their system and continue to figure out the brain.
ReplyDeleteA terabyte is... a lot of data. I suppose that makes sense if they're looking at an entire brain on a cell-by-cell basis.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that we can see individual neurons at all is completely amazing. Less than six months ago I heard about the Connectome Project (http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/), which is looking just to get a general sense of how messages are relayed through the brain. Depending on how fast the data can be parsed and analyzed, this could give an amazing level of insight as to how brains function (of course, I'm assuming that there are a lot of similarities between zebrafish brains and our own, which is probably not true at all).