Space Telescope Tech Miniaturized to Look into the Brain

Optical technologies previously used to look at the stars in the sky will be miniaturized to look inside the brain, and could lead to new treatments for neurological diseases. The technologies once used to make corrections to space telescopes, along with new lasers, will help answer a fundamental question, according to Prakash Kara, Ph.D., a researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina. Kara is part of a team at MUSC that was awarded a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation through its Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The grant will fund collaborative research between MUSC and the University of Alabama at Birmingham to map changes in blood flow when specific neurons in the brain fire.

Dr. Prakash Kara says new equipment funded by the grant will dramatically improve researchers' ability to capture images deep in the brain. (Credit: Sarah Pack)

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X-ray vision with safe, visible light

According to Nature, scientists are honing methods to reassemble scattered light that passes through opaque objects to create a usable image on the other side, enabling see-through (super!) vision of objects.

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Artificial Retina

Physicists developed an interface to the optical nerve using graphene for an optical prostheses.

Graphene is viewed as a kind of "miracle solution": It is thin, transparent and has a tensile strength greater than that of steel. In addition, it conducts electricity better than copper. Since it comprises only a single layer of carbon atoms it is considered two-dimensional.

 In 2010 the scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for their ground-breaking work on this material.

In October 2013, the "Graphene" project was selected alongside the "Human Brain Project" as a Flagship Project of the EU FET Initiative (Future and Emerging Technologies).

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Growing new brains with infrared light

University of Texas Arlington scientists have discovered a way to control the growth or repair of neurons and neuron circuits, using a non-invasive “neuronal beacon” (near-IR laser beam) — essentially rewiring brains, or even creating new ones.

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Injectable Optoelectronics for Brain Control

Photo: University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and
Washington University-St. Louis

A flexible system that includes electrodes, LEDs, photodetectors, and a temperature sensor were designed to be implanted in an animal’s brain and wirelessly controlled via an RF receiver affixed to the animal’s skull.

Optogenetics, a recently developed technique that uses light to map and control brain activity, requires the genetic modification of an animal’s brain cells and the insertion of optical fibers and electrical wire into its brain. The bulky wires and fibers emerge from the skull, hampering the animal’s movement and making it difficult to perform certain experiments that could lead to breakthroughs for Parkinson’s disease, addiction, depression, and spinal cord injuries.

But now, a new ultrathin, flexible device laden with light-emitting diodes and sensors, both the size of individual brain cells, promises to make optogenetics completely wireless. The 20-micrometer-thick device can be safely injected deep into the brain and controlled and powered using radio-frequency signals. Its developers say the technology could also be used in other parts of the body, with broad implications for medical diagnosis and therapy.

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Whole brain cellular-level activity mapping once a second

Neuroscientists at Howard Hughes Medical Institute have mapped the activity of nearly all the neurons in a vertebrate brain at cellular resolution, with signficant implications for neuroscience research and projects like the proposed Brain Activity Map (BAM).

This represents the first technology that achieves whole brain imaging of a vertebrate brain at cellular resolution with speeds that approximate neural activity patterns and behavior, as Nature Methods methagora blog noted.

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How a Vision Prosthetic Could Bypass the Visual System

Electrical stimulation of the visual cortex may one day give image perception to blind people. Work presented at the Society for Neuroscience 2012 meeting in New Orleans suggested a way to create a completely new kind of visual prosthetic—one that restores vision by directly activating the brain.

In a poster session, researchers presented results showing how electrical stimulation of the visual cortex can evoke the sensation of simple flashes of light—including spatial information about those flashes. 

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The Puzzling Role Of Biophotons In The Brain

In recent years, a growing body of evidence shows that photons play an important role in the basic functioning of cells. Most of this evidence comes from turning the lights off and counting the number of photons that cells produce. It turns out, much to many people's surprise, that many cells, perhaps even most, emit light as they work. Various work suggests that neurons emit and even conduct photons. Could it be that biophotons help to synchronise the brain?

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New automated tomography imaging process speeds up whole-brain mapping

Serial Two-Photon Tomography (STP tomography), a new technology developed by neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and MIT, significantly speeds up the process of acquiring highly detailed anatomical images of whole brains. Until now, the process has been painstakingly slow and available only to a handful of highly specialized research teams.

STP tomography achieves high-throughput fluorescence imaging of whole mouse brains via robotic integration of the two fundamental steps — tissue sectioning and fluorescence imaging. At 10x magnification of brain tissue samples, the researchers were able to achieve fast imaging at a resolution sufficient to visualize the distribution and morphology of green-fluorescent protein-labeled neurons, including their dendrites and axons, Osten reports.

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New ‘smart’ material could help tap medical potential of tissue-penetrating light

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego Skaggs School Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences report development and successful initial testing of the first practical “smart” material to use a form of light that can penetrate four inches into the human body, for use in diagnosing diseases and engineering new human tissues in the lab. They used near-infrared (NIR) light (just beyond what humans can see), which penetrates through the skin and almost four inches into the body. Low-power NIR does not damage body tissues. However, current NIR-responsive smart materials require high-power NIR light, which could damage cells and tissues.

They developed a new smart polymer (plastic). Hit with low-power NIR, the material breaks apart into small pieces that appear to be nontoxic to surrounding tissue. They could put the polymer in an implantable hydrogel, which is a water-containing flexible material used for tissue engineering and drug delivery. A hydrogel with the new polymer could release medications or imaging agents when hit with NIR. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of a polymeric material capable of disassembly into small molecules in response to harmless levels of irradiation,” say the researchers.

A practical "smart" material that may supply the missing link in efforts to medically use a form of light that can penetrate four inches into the human body (credit: University of California, San Diego)

Ref.: Nadezda Fomina, et al., Low Power, Biologically Benign NIR Light Triggers Polymer Disassembly, Macromolecules, 2011; 44 (21): 8590 [DOI: 10.1021/ma201850q]

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