>O2 VISIONS > The Secrets of the first human brain

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(Images: Allen Institute for Brain Science)

 World’s first human brain map unveiled

NEW SCIENTIST

Hayley Crawford, reporter

The world’s first computerised map of the brain was released yesterday by scientists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, in Seattle, Washington, after more than four years of cutting-edge research.

The Human Brain Atlas is an interactive research tool that will help scientists to understand how the brain works and aid new discoveries in disease and treatments.
The information used to build it comes from the analysis of two human brains, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and a variation of MRI called diffusion tensor imaging.
Allan Jones, the CEO of the institute, told Wired how the brains were also chopped up into small pieces, and RNA extracted from the tissue. They used this RNA to obtain a read-out of the 25,000 genes in the human genome.
All this information was put together to create a detailed map of the brain. One thousand anatomical sites in the brain can be searched, supported by more than 100 million data points that indicate the gene expression and biochemistry of each site.
For example, a researcher could quickly create a 3D snapshot (see image below) of all the locations in the brain where Prozac’s biochemical targets are expressed.

The researchers found a striking 94 per cent similarity in the biochemistry between the two brains, and discovered that at least 82 per cent of all human genes are expressed in the brain.
Allan says this isn’t too surprising:

When you think about the complexity of the functions of the brain, and the variety of different cell types found within the brain, it’s not quite as surprising to see how much of the genome is used to serve the brain

 

 Both brains used in the $55 million project were male, which prompted The Wall Street Journal to ask why a woman’s brain had not been included. Allan told Bloomberg that eligible brain donors usually die from accidental causes or cardiac arrest, both of which disproportionately affect men. However, he says the project is currently processing a female brain, and that ultimately, the facility will run at least 10 brains through the process.

Other researchers are also attempting to map neural connections in a mouse brain, something MRI cannot do. They will turn slices of brain into digital images by an automated electron microscope. A computer will read those images, trace the outlines of nerve cells, and stack the pictures into a 3D reconstruction.
Maps like these have limitless potential in drug discovery and human genetics and will no doubt be an essential step forward in the fight against disease.

Related articles

• Human brain atlas debuts (blogs.nature.com)
• Blog – A Comprehensive Gene Map of the Human Brain (technologyreview.com)
• Scientists Complete Detailed Map of Human Brain (nlm.nih.gov)
• Human Brain Gets New Map (wired.com)
• Scientists Unveil Atlas of the Brain (online.wsj.com)

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>O2 VISIONS – Thinking Big: Journey to the Centre of the Earth

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(Credit: Bulent Bas/CBSNews.com)

 by Charles Cooper  

File this one away under the rubric of “thinking big.”

A half century after scientists failed on their first attempt to penetrate the Earth’s mantle, geologists Damon Teagle of the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, England, and Benoit Ildefonse from Montpellier University in France say it’s time for a second try. And unlike their predecessors, they have the technology to turn that challenging endeavor into a reality.

 

The goal is to retrieve samples from the Earth’s mantle, a feat which, if successful, would supply a trove of new information about our planet’s origins and history. Scientists still don’t have a good idea how magma moves through the upper mantle and into the crust. Nor do they know much about the coupling of the crust and the underlying mantle–that is, what’s pushing or pulling what. Thus the intrigue of burrowing into a region still untouched by human exploration.
“If we could recover pristine samples of mantle rocks then we could make better estimates of the composition of our planet–and have a better understanding of how our planet has evolved and “differentiated” into the spheres (crust, mantle, core etc),” Teagle wrote in an e-mail interview with CBSNews.com.
“A pristine sample of say 500 meters of the upper mantle could liberate answers to these questions and much more,” according to Teagle. The search for a potential drill site in the Pacific will start this spring, with an eye on beginning the project later in the decade. The three most likely sites up for consideration include the coasts of Hawaii, Baja California, and Costa Rica. Once work gets under way, it will take between 18 months and 2 years to reach the Earth’s mantle.

The first time scientists attempted to penetrate the Pacific Ocean’s crust–in the spring of 1961–the novelist (and amateur oceanographer) John Steinbeck went along for the ride, chronicling the expedition for Life magazine. But the project had only limited success–it took some core samples from the top part of the ocean’s crust near Guadalupe Island in the eastern Pacific Ocean–and Congress canceled its funding five years later.
But Teagle noted that deep ocean drilling has come a very long way in the last 50 years, largely as a result of the experience of scientific ocean drilling “and because the offshore petroleum industry has moved into deeper water.” He pointed to advances, such as thrusters, transponders, and GPS technology, to hold the ship in place in very deep water and allow researchers to routinely re-enter holes to replace drill bits, which typically wear out after about 50 hours of use.
“We also have a much better understanding of what we are trying to do–we have good understanding of how the ocean crust is formed and the difference between the crust and the mantle. However, some details remain elusive,” he added.
That’s not to say all the technical hurdles have been cleared away. The project will depend on improved drill bits, tools, and instruments that can work at very high temperatures of around 300 degrees Celsius.
In publicizing their interest in the journal Nature, Teagle and Ildefonse wrote that while reaching the mantle posed the biggest challenge in the history of Earth science, it also offered an extraordinary reward–nothing less than “a legacy of fundamental scientific knowledge, and inspiration and training for the next generation of geoscientists, engineers, and technologists.”

This story first appeared on CBSNews.com.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-20048489-76.html#ixzz1I1zDfctH

Related articles

• Scientists plan to drill all the way down to the Earth’s mantle (physorg.com)
• Scientists To Drill Deeper Than Ever Before, Hope To Sample Mantle (huffingtonpost.com)
• Drilling into the planet: Why we want to sample the mantle (and why we already have) (bigthink.com)
• Journey to the Earth’s Mantle to Go Deeper than Ever Before (livescience.com)
• Scientists To Drill Into the Earth’s Mantle, What Could Go Wrong? (neatorama.com)
• First journey to Earth’s mantle will see scientists drill deeper than ever before (dailymail.co.uk)
• Journey planned to the center of the Earth (cbsnews.com)
• Journey planned to the center of the Earth (news.cnet.com)

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