This is a digital reconstruction of a rosehip neuron from a human brain. (Tamás Lab, University of Szeged)
A gene-by-gene, neuron-by-neuron search has turned up a new breed of brain cell that may serve as a fine-scale “volume control” for neural activity in humans.
“It’s very rare, and you only see it, so far, in a human,” study co-author Ed Lein, an investigator at the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Brain Science, told GeekWire.
Lein’s group at the Allen Institute and a Hungarian research team at the University of Szeged, headed by Gábor Tamás, narrowed in on the neurons using two different lines of inquiry.
Jerome Lecoq, senior manager of optical physiology at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, sets up a microscope in the Allen Brain Observatory. The observatory is run by a team of nearly 100 engineers, scientists and technicians. (Allen Institute Photo)
OpenScope is open for business.
The Seattle-based Allen Institute for Brain Science has taken a page from the playbook for the Hubble Space Telescope to create its latest channel for open-access neuroscience.
Like Hubble’s handlers, the institute is taking requests from researchers for access to its experimental platform for observing neural activity in mice.
Leaders of the project went so far as to consult with leaders in the astronomy community, particularly at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, to learn how they divvy up telescope time.
“We seek to do the same in neuroscience, where we now have a brain-based observatory,” Christof Koch, the Allen Institute’s chief scientist and president, said today in a news release.
Oxford University neuroscientist Louis-David Lord discusses the effect of psychedelic drugs on the brain during the CNS 2018 meeting at the University of Washington;. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
What’s the best way to fine-tune brain stimulation to stop tremors? How do brain-wave patterns shift as we grow up? Can psychedelic drugs reverse the descent into depression? Such questions are being addressed in Seattle this week during a conference that blends big data and brain science.
The Blue Brain Project’s new supercomputer is based on the HPE SGI 8600 System. (HPE Photo)
Hewlett Packard Enterprise says it’s been selected to build a supercomputer designed to simulate the inner workings of the mouse brain by 2020.
The computer, known as Blue Brain 5, will become the platform for the Blue Brain Project, a Swiss-led campaign to model and simulate the mammalian brain. The project — which is under the supervision of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, or EPFL — meshes with international neuroscience efforts such as Europe’s Human Brain Project and the U.S. BRAIN Initiative.
“The Blue Brain Project’s scientific mission is critically dependent on our supercomputing capabilities,” project co-director Felix Schürmann said today in a news release announcing the collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
“Modeling an individual neuron at Blue Brain today leads to around 20,000 ordinary differential equations – when modeling entire brain regions, this quickly raises to 100 billion equations that have to be solved concurrently,” Schürmann said. “HPE helps us to navigate the challenging technology landscape in supercomputing.”
HPE was awarded an initial contract for the project at the end of 2017, and follow-up work could bring the total value of the award to more than $18 million.
Today’s release also includes a new, browser-based beta version of a 3-D viewer called the Allen Brain Explorer, which lets users explore the anatomy and connectivity maps for the mouse brain. The Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas has been freshened up with more information. More details about RNA transcription in mouse, human and macaque brain cells have been added as well.
The upgrades are all part of the open-science mission for the Allen Institute, which Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen created in 2003 and has supported to the tune of half a billion dollars.
An optical-fiber device shoots pulses of light into the brain of a transgenic rat to study its behavior when specific sets of neurons are stimulated. (Northern Michigan University Photo)
If Neuralink, the brain-chip company backed by billionaire Elon Musk, ever wants to hook up minds and machines, it’ll have to test the technology on animals first.
Today Gizmodo reports that the California-based venture is already looking into animal testing, and may have funded some experiments already.
That assessment is based on a permit for using lab animals that Neuralink received from California state officials, plus a letter sent to San Francisco city planners that referred to building “a small operating room for in vivo testing, and a small room to house rodents.”
Gizmodo says there’s no evidence that Neuralink has gone ahead with the building plans, let alone the animal tests. However, a representative of the University of California at Davis is quoted as confirming that Neuralink is sponsoring research there.
A computerized model provides a detailed biophysical representation of a neuron’s firing pattern. (Allen Institute for Brain Science via YouTube)
Seattle’s Allen Institute for Brain Science has created a publicly available database of computerized neuron models that could be used as building blocks to study how brains work in the real world.
The two sets of computer models are described in studies published by Nature Communications, and are available on the Web via celltypes.brain-map.org. The supporting code for the computer models can be accessed via the Allen Institute’s GitHub space.
Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are studying how bacteria in the gut can affect the brain’s memory function. (PNNL Illustration)
AUSTIN, Texas — Can probiotic bacteria play a role in how well your memory works? It’s too early to say for sure, but mouse studies have turned up some clues worth remembering.
Preliminary results suggest that giving mice the kinds of bacteria often found in dietary supplements have a beneficial effect on memory when it comes to navigating mazes or avoiding electrical shocks.
One such study, focusing on mazes and object-in-place recognition, was published last year. And researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., are seeing similarly beneficial effects on memory in preliminary results from their experiments.
A digital 3-D reconstruction shows a handful of neurons that wrap around a mouse’s brain and are connected to a sheet of brain cells known as the claustrum. (Allen Institute for Brain Science)
SAN FRANCISCO — For decades, neuroscientist Christof Koch has been searching for the seat of consciousness — a quest that has taken him deep within the brains of mice, and to the doorstep of the Dalai Lama.
Now the president and chief scientific officer of Seattle’s Allen Institute for Brain Science is closing in on a big part of the answer in a small part of the brain.
The part in question is known as the claustrum, a thin, irregular sheet of neurons that’s found in each hemisphere of the brain, underneath the cortex.
Koch and the late biologist Francis Crick, a co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix structure, took note of the claustrum more than a decade ago — but it’s taken that long for experimental techniques to progress to the point where neuroscientists can literally shed light on how the claustrum and its network of connected neurons work.
“It connects to every point of the cortex, bidirectionally,” Koch said Oct. 27 at the World Conference of Science Journalists in San Francisco. “Crick and I hypothesized that the function of the claustrum is to do something like consciousness. In a sense, it acts like the conductor of the cortical symphony.”
Slices of human brain tissue, extracted from patients during neurosurgery, are kept alive in a special bath of chilled, oxygenated fluid. (Allen Institute for Brain Science)
Zapping brain cells from living human tissue? It sounds like a creepy Halloween tale, but for the Allen Institute for Brain Science, it’s a clever way to understand more fully how the brain works — and potentially bring healing to future patients.
“It doesn’t creep me out at all,” Jonathan Ting, an assistant investigator at the Seattle institute who’s been deeply involved in the project, told GeekWire. “I feel like it’s our obligation as scientists.”
