Lighting Up the Brain by Marc Zimmer

Author:Marc Zimmer [Zimmer, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's disease, Animal Testing, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Autism, autism spectrum disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Binomial Nomenclature, Biochemical, Biochemical Processes, Biological, Biological Technique, Biology, Bioluminescence, Blindness, Brain, Brain Cells, Brain Chemistry, Brain Chemistry and Structure, Brain Functions, Brain Health, Brain Hemispheres, Brain Injuries, Brain Injury, Brain Research, Brain Scans, Brain Structure, Brain Study, Brain Surgery, Brain Waves, calcium-modulated photoactivatable, CaMPARI, Cell, Cells, channelrhodopsins, CLARITY, clear lipid-exchanged acrylamide-hybridized, Cyborg, Cyborgs, DBS, deep-brain stimulation (DBS), Depression, Depression & Mental Illness, Disease, Diseases, Disorder, Disorders, Doctor, DragonflEye, Drone, Drones, Drones and Flying Robots, EEG, electroencephalogram (EEG), electroencephalograph (EEG), Electromagnetic spectrum, Epilepsy, fluorescent imaging, fluorescent organisms, Fluorescent Proteins, fMRI, functional MRI (fMRI), Genetic Engineering, Genetics, halorhodopsins, Hear, Hearing, Hippocrates, Inventions, Lighting Up the Brain, Lighting Up the Brain: The Science of Optogenetics, Live Organism, Live Organisms, Living Cells, Living Tissue, Long-term Memory, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Marc Zimmer, Medical, Medical Advancements, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Memory, Mental, Mind, Mind Control, Mind Games, Modern Medicine, MRI, Narcolepsy, Nervous System, Nervous Tissue, Neural, Neural Disorders, Neuro, Neurons, Neuroscience, Neurotransmitter, Nonfiction, Optical Illusions, Optogenetic, Optogenetic Science, Optogenetics, Organism, Organisms, Parkinson's, Parkinson's Disease, Parts of the Brain, Phantom Limb Syndrome, Physician, Reading the Mind, Retinitis Pigmentosa, Science, Science and Technology, Science, Nature & How It Works, Science, Nature, and How It Works, Scientist, Scientists, Senses, Short-term Memory, Sight, Sleep, Sleep Disorder, Sleeping, Smell, Smelling, Stem, Stem, Synapses, Taste, Technology, TFCB, The Science of Optogenetics, Touch, Twenty First Century Books, Twenty-First Century Books, Vision, Working Memory, Young Adult Nonfiction, Young Adults
ISBN: 9781541521988
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Published: 2018-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A drawback to GCaMP is that the protein lights up only temporarily when a neuron fires. If researchers don’t have their microscopes focused on the right spot on an animal’s brain, they can miss the light.

A fluorescent protein called calcium-modulated photoactivatable ratiometric integrator, or CaMPARI, gives scientists more than just a temporary snapshot of neural activity. This laboratory-made protein turns from green to red when calcium ions flood a neuron during firing. But instead of the red light fading away after firing, the neuron remains red permanently. The red neurons give researchers a permanent record of neural activity.

Scientists have used CaMPARI to monitor the behavior of neurons of fruit flies and zebra fish. Previously, scientists could study the neurons of these small animals only if they were immobilized in a glass dish under a microscope. CaMPARI works even if the animals are moving freely. Loren Looger, who helped develop CaMPARI at Janelia Research Campus in Virginia, says, “The most enabling [helpful] thing about this technology may be that you don’t have to have your organism under a microscope during your experiment. So we can now visualize neural activity in fly larvae crawling on a plate or fish swimming in a dish.”

The scientists at Janelia Research Campus are working on creating CaMPARI technology to use with mice. Because mouse brains and human brains are similar in many ways, CaMPARI and other fluorescent protein technology will help scientists learn more about the workings of the human brain.

Which Animals Work Best?

To learn about the human body, scientists frequently study the bodies of certain mammals. These animals are called model organisms because they are models, or stand-ins, for the human body.

Rats and mice are used as model organisms. Since these rodents, like humans, are mammals, scientists can learn about human physiology (body systems) by studying rats and mice. And rat and mouse brains have many similarities to human brains. For example, they are divided into similar regions. They have similar cerebral cortexes and hippocampi where memories are stored. Their neurons are also very similar. Under a microscope, it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between a rodent neuron and a human neuron.

For decades the rat was the neuroscientist’s model organism of choice, mainly because rats are easy to train and will readily run through mazes and undergo other tests. But in the late twentieth century, mice became the model animal of choice. More and more animal research involves genetic engineering, and mice are much easier to genetically modify than rats because mouse DNA has far fewer base chemicals than rat DNA. Mice also have more young per year than rats, so scientists can more quickly breed groups of mice for experiments. Mice brains have fewer cells than rat brains, so they are easier to study than rat brains. And since mice are smaller than rats, scientists can keep many more of them in the same amount of space.

A mouse brain is about three thousand times lighter than a human brain, but it is still much too large to be viewed under a microscope all at once.

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