Introduction to Contemporary Neuroscience Will discuss basic principles of the nervous system functioning and the recent advances and findings from human brain mapping. (Reading: Zimmer, C., & Clark, R. (2014). Secrets of the brain. Nat. Geogr, 28-58.) Klára Marečková, Ph.D., M.Sc. „The human brain is a threepound wad of flesh able to explore the universe, imagine a better world, and ponder its own nature. Armed with far more sophisticated imaging techniques, scientists today are reaching toward an ultimate understanding of what makes us us.“ (Visible Human Brain Project). What do we know about the human brain? 1820s: Mind located in the brain - Founder of experimental brain science; through the study of ablations on animals, he was the first to prove that the mind was located in the brain, not the heart. 1860s: Localization of brain function - brains of patients suffering from aphasia contained lesions in a particular part of the cortex, in the left frontal region. This was the first anatomical proof of localization of brain function. 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine Neuron as the functional unit of the brain. 1924: first human EEG • Hans Berger invented electroencephalogram and recorded first human EEG • The electrodes attached to the subject's scalp transmit the electrical signals produced by the brain to the EEG monitor. Since these electrical signals are very small (of the order of 10s of microvolts) the EEG acts as an amplifier, typically amplifying them by 10,000 times, as well as a device to measure them. 1968: first MEG recordings • David Cohen first measured MEG signals • The brain's magnetic field, measuring at 10 femotesla (fT) for cortical activity and 103 fT for the human alpha rhythm, is considerably smaller than the ambient magnetic noise in an urban environment, which is on the order of 108 fT or 0.1 µT. • The essential problem of biomagnetism is, thus, the weakness of the signal relative to the sensitivity of the detectors, and to the competing environmental noise. Since the magnetic signals emitted by the brain are on the order of a few femtoteslas, shielding from external magnetic signals, including the Earth’s magnetic field, is necessary. Appropriate magnetic shielding can be obtained by constructing rooms made of aluminium and mu-metal for reducing high-frequency and low-frequency noise, respectively. First Departments of Neuroscience 1950s 1960s 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine • Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield received the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for discoveries concerning Magnetic Resonance Imaging (and fast imaging allowing functional magnetic resonance imaging) Most powerful scanners record activity down to the scale of a cubic millimeter – a sesame seed’s worth of tissue. But within that space, hundreds of thousands of neurons are firing. „The brain is a world consisting of a number of unexplored continents and great stretches of unknown territory.“ Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Brain Structure Paus, 2010 Brain Function Paus, 2010 Paus, 2010 What are the factors that shape our brains and generate the impressive interindividual variability? Brain Development in First 2 Years of Life Knickmeyer et al., 2008 Brain Development during Adolescence Brain Development during Adolescence Perrin et al., 2008 Brain Plasticity Draganski et al., 2004 Brain Plasticity Maguire et al., 2000 Paus, 2010 Paus, 2010 Paus, 2010 Paus, 2013 Brain Development during Adolescence Paus et al., 2012rs 716890 of KCTD8 gene Medicine Today - reactive - one-size-fits-all model of care Personalized Medicine - predictive/preventive - patient centric model of care ❖ Announced by Barack Obama in spring 2013 ❖ BRAIN 2025: A Scientific Vision – first half to design tools and technology, second half to use them to make fundamental discoveries about how brain circuits work and what goes wrong in disease https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T5q9NSa3kM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2W570VgV6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqMpGrM5ECo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm4XK02dFlU Intro https://www.thevirtualbrain.org/tvb/zwei/home# Randy McIntosh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m5HOlLd9BY Petra Ritter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdE9Rgx_yls ❖ Aims to create a large-scale neural simulation ❖ Our big vision is for future treatments to be tested on a patient's digital doppelganger. ❖ By entering data from an individual patient into the model, operators can produce personalized brain models. ❖ 'The Virtual Brain' will ensure access to a validated, well-documented software, thus avoiding a situation in which individual laboratories develop and work with their own in-house solutions. http://www.neurosynth.org/locations/ Functional Inference ➢ New technologies are shedding light on biology’s greatest unsolved mystery: how the brain really works. ➢ Try to volunteer for a study and wonder about the neuroscience research at your institute of choice. ➢ Depression ➢ Bipolar ➢ Schizophrenia ➢ Healthy Controls Clinical Studies Cohort Studies ➢ Project VULDE, neuro-physio follow-up of ELSPAC Experimental Studies Intervention -Prevention Studies ➢ Sleep deprivation and its effects on axonal transport ➢ Preventing mental illness in adolescents born preterm ❖ Biomarkers (RDoC; focus on shared traits) ❖ Early biomarkers (focus on these traits) ❖ Origins and underlying mechanisms ❖ Prevention Collaboration with Harvard Medical School Marie Curie Project (FP7-2013-IEF) Collaboration with Child Mind Institute and UofT Possible European Project (H2020- Health)