Remote Control for the Brain

What if it were possible to treat brain disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, epilepsy, and Parkinson's disease and other neurological and psychiatric disorders with more efficacy and fewer side effects?  Moreover, what if it this technology were as simple as switching a light on?  If you've suffered from mental illness, I'm sure this sounds too good to be true. Well, not according to Ed Boyden at MIT.

Neurons are themselves electrical devices, and in order to treat brain disorders it is necessary to understand how the elements of a neural circuit work together. It's not as simple as it sounds.

Brain cells in many disorders in the neurological field do not show damage to the individual cell, but an inability for the brain cells to create proper circuit function. Electrical stimulation provokes communication between nerve cells but cannot target specific neural cells. But now systematic analysis of brain circuits is possible. With this new light switch technology, it's possible to make neurons controllable with pulses of colored light. 

In summary, we have identified optogenetic proteins that act as molecular tools to make neurons controllable with pulses of colored light. We are now developing high-count arrays of optical fibers that enable perturbation of activity in distributed and complexly shaped neural circuits, in order to open up systematic analysis of brain circuits. By revealing the neural substrates that can most powerfully control and correct aberrant neural computations, these tools will lead to better therapies for treating brain disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, epilepsy, and Parkinson's disease. New drugs can be generated that target these control circuits but not other unrelated ones, presenting more efficacy and fewer side effects. They may also present new targets for neuromodulation therapies such as deep-brain and transcranial magnetic stimulation. The ability to optically control cells may directly enable a new generation of optical prostheses, which can precisely control aspects of patient physiology using temporally precise pulses of light.

So the channelrhodopsin switch, or light-switch technology, may some day give birth to a treatment for neurological and psychiatric disorders that requires only a remote control to function correctly. 

The channelrhodopsin switch is “really going to blow the lid off the whole analysis of brain function,”-- George Augustine, Neurobiologist at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

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Harnessing the Fireworks Inside

Okay, this post dates back to December of 2007, but since finding alternative energy sources seems to be more important than ever, and it's the 4th of July, I thought I'd combine both and resurrect.

We the people are loaded with creative potential, more than we'll ever use; much like fireworks loaded with combustible material, just waiting to explode. However, it's possible we're loaded with a lot more than latent genius and...uh..

Anyway, our cells may have more capability than we ever thought possible. They could be the missing link...an "alternative energy" source.

I don't know what that would look like but it sure would solve a lot of problems. Imagine if we could figure out how to tap into the powerful electrical fields inside our own cells...much lower electric bills, bankrupt oil industry, the end of antidepressants and all sorts of pharmaceuticals, and perhaps a bankrupt pharmaceutical industry as well. And last but not least, the end of the Republican party.

Never say never because researchers at University of Michigan have found electric fields inside cells as strong as those produced in lightning bolts. Scientists are not clear as to what causes these strong fields or what their purpose is but by using nano-tools such as voltage sensitive dyes, they can start to measure them.

There may be a lot more to the following expressions than previously thought.

• Shocking experience.
• State of shock.
• It gave me a jolt.
• Sparks flew.
• Blow your fuse.
• Blow your top.
• Get a charge out of something.
• Galvanize into action.
• His speech was electrifying.

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Electricity to Zap Cancer Cells

Twelve major hospitals are testing a "noninvasive device that generates electrical fields of a certain strength that, it's hoped, will kill cancer cells but not normal brain tissues" on patients with the deadliest form of brain cancer, Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM)

This procedure is based on the fact that cells are most vulnerable to electromagnetic fields when they're dividing and cancer cells divide rapidly as opposed to brain cells which divide very infrequently, if at all.

Unlike chemotherapy and radiation therapy commonly used to treat cancer today, this treatment has shown minimal toxicity.

"We've been very happy to find that there is minimal toxicity-- of course we all know about the possible bad side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy," he says. "And so far this new type of treatment has been found to be very safe. And what the study is doing is looking to see whether or not it's effective. There's no cutting, there's no drugs involved at all, it's very simple, almost too simple,"

"We're putting electrodes on someone's head, we're putting an electric field through that, and that electric field is killing cancer cells."

-- Herb Engelhard, Neuro-oncologist

Hopefully, people with this insidious type of brain cancer, will have this treatment available as an option very soon...these patients do not have much to lose and everything to gain without the pain and danger of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

"It might show up on the MRI scan as a circle or a ball, but really, by the time it's seen on the MRI scan, individual cells have gone deep into the brain. So glioblastoma multiforme is really cancer of the brain, and it's very, very difficult to treat," he says. "Once the tumor does not respond to radiation therapy and chemotherapy-- because surgery can't remove it all-- then one does have a very short time left on average."

-- Herb Engelhard, Neuro-oncologist

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Red Peppers Fight Fat.

Food scientists in Taiwan are reporting new evidence from laboratory experiments that capsaicin — the natural compound that gives red pepper that spicy hot kick — can reduce the growth of fat cells. The study is scheduled for the March 21 issue of the ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

In the report, Gow-Chin Yen and Chin-Lin Hsu cite previous research suggesting that obesity can be reduced by preventing immature fat cells (adipocytes) from developing into mature cells.

Past research also linked capsaicin to a decrease in the amount of fat tissue and decreased blood-fat levels. With that knowledge, the researchers tested capsaicin’s effects on pre-adipocytes and adipocytes growing in laboratory cultures.

They found that capsaicin prevented pre-adipocytes from filling with fat and becoming full-fledged fat cells. The effects occurred at levels just slightly greater than those found in the stomach fluid of an individual eating a typical Indian or Thai diet, the researchers noted. Capsaicin worked by providing a biochemical signal that made fat cells undergo apoptosis, a mechanism in which cells self-destruct.

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Cannibals in the Body

Your tummy may be grumbling for a Thanksgiving feast, but scientists have found cells in our bodies that are even hungrier. As this ScienCentral News video explains, the discovery could lead to more effective flu shots and other vaccines.

When scientists at Oregon Health and Science University started experimenting with immune system cells, they witnessed a surprising new way that our body defends itself against viruses. Under the microscope, they watched immune cells, called "killer T-cells," munching on bits of their enemy.

Killer T-cells target body cells that have become virus factories, churning out copies of viruses that have infected them. Immunologist Mark Slifka and his colleagues marked these infected cells with a special green dye. Researchers knew that when killer T-cells attack these virus factories, they spew destructive chemicals, such as cytokines. "If they come up to a cell and they can recognize that it's infected with a virus that they know, they will attack that cell and actually deliver a lethal payload to that cell causing it to self-destruct," Slifka says.

But surprisingly, these cells were doing much more. "When we threw in troops of these killer T-cells ... when they recognized these virus-infected cells that were green, they themselves began to turn green," he says.

This means that the killer T-cells were literally taking a bite out of the membrane or skin of the infected cell. "This is truly a case of microscopic cannibalism," Slifka says. "And this is the first time we've seen virus-specific killer T-cells ingest parts of infected cells."

"This information is actually starting to develop into a new area of investigation where people are studying this phenomenon of T-cells cannibalizing other cells," he says. "And we still don't know really why they're doing this."

Slifka thinks the immune system cells are actually using the infected cells as a food source, which may be what makes them so effective. "So not only do you have this warrior cell coming in and attacking these virus factories, but it's able to take away nourishment from this in order to help it to continue the fight against the infection," he says.

As he wrote in the journal Nature Medicine, drug researchers can use this discovery to measure how well a new vaccine works. Vaccines, like the flu shot given each year, contain dead or weakened germs that give your immune system a pattern to recognize stronger versions of that virus in the future. Vaccines spur the development of T-cells floating around in the body.

Vaccine Microscope
By color coding the killer T-cells, researchers can track the effectiveness of a vaccine.
"Now that we know that you can detect virus-specific T-cells by the fact that they will tear off and eat colored infected cells we can now measure T-cell responses not only after a natural infection but also after a vaccine," he says.

While he says that there are other ways of measuring T-cells response to infection, Slifka says that this is a more precise way of measuring that response. Different types of T-cells have a range of functions for the immune system, from producing antibodies, which are proteins that identify threats, to killing infected cells. "Every T-cell will be a little bit different in terms of how it reacts to virus-specific cells. And what we're able to do is measure all the T-cells regardless of what their individual roles are," he says.

Slifka and his colleagues also found that the killer T-cell can be a pretty picky eater, choosing certain kinds of cells to munch on, but not others. While researchers are still unclear why, killer T-cells will eat infected white blood cells, but refuse to eat infected fibroblasts, a type of cell that provides structure to connective tissue. "It's like a child who has a choice between sugar cookies and Brussels sprouts -- they'll take one over the other every time," he says.

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