2023 December
Turning Discoveries into Health for All
Posted on by Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli
Greetings, blog readers! I’m Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, and I’m honored to be serving as the 17th Director of the National Institutes of Health. I’m excited to continue the NIH Director’s Blog to share with you the exciting discoveries and fascinating research conducted here at NIH and at the organizations we support in the U.S. and around the world. But before we start diving into the latest advances, I wanted to share a bit about myself and what I’m looking forward to as NIH Director.
I spent most of my career caring for people with cancer as a surgical oncologist and researcher before joining NIH last year as Director of the National Cancer Institute. While I miss the operating room (although I couldn’t stay away for long—more about that in a forthcoming blog!) and the opportunity to work with patients every day, I’m eager to serve the public in my new role as NIH Director.
When I was growing up, my family raised sheep and cattle on a ranch at the base of the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming. I know the health challenges that come with living in a rural area: Not everyone has access to an academic medical center and clinical studies, and managing the logistics of routine and preventive check-ups can be difficult. Unfortunately, many of our research advances are not reaching enough people in these areas.
As a cancer survivor, I am keenly aware that I’ve been fortunate to have access to excellent care, which has been directly informed by NIH-funded research over the past five decades. I know the transformative power of research to save lives, but from my experience as a clinician, I know that it is not always possible for people to receive the care that they need due to financial, geographic, or cultural barriers. It is unacceptable for the benefits of NIH-funded biomedical research to be available to some but not all.
That’s why one of my goals as NIH Director is to ensure the biomedical research enterprise and its discoveries—from basic to clinical research—are more inclusive and accessible to people from all walks of life, including rural areas. Income, age, race, ethnicity, geographic location, and disability status should not be barriers to participating in research or to benefitting from research advances. By meeting people where they are and engaging more communities as our research partners, I believe we can also make significant progress in rebuilding trust in science across the country.
Right now, we have an unprecedented opportunity to embrace and increase access to innovation: Our knowledge and technology have developed to the point that we should be able to deliver evidence-based, data-driven health care to everyone. This is an exciting time for science, and I can’t wait to share more with you in the weeks and months to come.
Experiencing the Neural Symphony Underlying Memory through a Blend of Science and Art
Posted on by John Ngai, PhD, NIH BRAIN Initiative
Ever wonder how you’re able to remember life events that happened days, months, or even years ago? You have your hippocampus to thank. This essential area in the brain relies on intense and highly synchronized patterns of activity that aren’t found anywhere else in the brain. They’re called “sharp-wave ripples.”
These dynamic ripples have been likened to the brain version of an instant replay, appearing most commonly during rest after a notable experience. And, now, the top video winner in this year’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative’s annual Show Us Your BRAINs! Photo and Video Contest allows you to witness the “chatter” that those ripples set off in other neurons. The details of this chatter determine just how durable a particular memory is in ways neuroscientists are still working hard to understand.
Neuroscientist Saman Abbaspoor in the lab of Kari Hoffman at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, in collaboration with Tyler Sloan from the Montreal-based Quorumetrix Studio, sets the stage in the winning video by showing an electrode or probe implanted in the brain that can reach the hippocampus. This device allows the Hoffman team to wirelessly record neural activity in different layers of the hippocampus as the animal either rests or moves freely about.
In the scenes that follow, neurons (blue, cyan, and yellow) flash on and off. The colors highlight the fact that this brain area and the neurons within it aren’t all the same. Various types of neurons are found in the brain area’s different layers, some of which spark the activity you see, while others dampen it.
Hoffman explains that the specific shapes of individual cells pictured are realistic but also symbolic. While they didn’t trace the individual branches of neurons in the brain in their studies, they relied on information from previous anatomical studies, overlaying their intricate forms with flashing bursts of activity that come straight from their recorded data.
Sloan then added yet another layer of artistry to the experience with what he refers to as sonification, or the use of music to convey information about the dynamic and coordinated bursts of activity in those cells. At five seconds in, you hear the subtle flutter of a sharp-wave ripple. With each burst of active neural chatter that follows, you hear the dramatic plink of piano keys.
Together, their winning video creates a unique sensory experience that helps to explain what goes on during memory formation and recall in a way that words alone can’t adequately describe. Through their ongoing studies, Hoffman reports that they’ll continue delving even deeper into understanding these intricate dynamics and their implications for learning and memory. Ultimately, they also want to explore how brain ripples, and the neural chatter they set off, might be enhanced to make memory formation and recall even stronger.
References:
S Abbaspoor & KL Hoffman. State-dependent circuit dynamics of superficial and deep CA1 pyramidal cells in macaques. BioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2023.12.06.570369 (2023). Please note that this article is a pre-print and has not been peer-reviewed.
NIH Support: The NIH BRAIN Initiative
This article was updated on Dec. 15, 2023 to reflect better the collaboration on the project among Abbaspoor, Hoffman and Sloan.
