BRAIN Initiative
An Inflammatory View of Early Alzheimer’s Disease
Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Detecting the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in middle-aged people and tracking its progression over time in research studies continue to be challenging. But it is easier to do in shorter-lived mammalian models of AD, especially when paired with cutting-edge imaging tools that look across different regions of the brain. These tools can help basic researchers detect telltale early changes that might point the way to better prevention or treatment strategies in humans.
That’s the case in this technicolor snapshot showing early patterns of inflammation in the brain of a relatively young mouse bred to develop a condition similar to AD. You can see abnormally high levels of inflammation throughout the front part of the brain (orange, green) as well as in its middle part—the septum that divides the brain’s two sides. This level of inflammation suggests that the brain has been injured.
What’s striking is that no inflammation is detectable in parts of the brain rich in cholinergic neurons (pink), a distinct type of nerve cell that helps to control memory, movement, and attention. Though these neurons still remain healthy, researchers would like to know if the inflammation also will destroy them as AD progresses.
This colorful image comes from medical student Sakar Budhathoki, who earlier worked in the NIH labs of Lorna Role and David Talmage, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Budhathoki, teaming with postdoctoral scientist Mala Ananth, used a specially designed wide-field scanner that sweeps across brain tissue to light up fluorescent markers and capture the image. It’s one of the scanning approaches pioneered in the Role and Talmage labs [1,2].
The two NIH labs are exploring possible links between abnormal inflammation and damage to the brain’s cholinergic signaling system. In fact, medications that target cholinergic function remain the first line of treatment for people with AD and other dementias. And yet, researchers still haven’t adequately determined when, why, and how the loss of these cholinergic neurons relates to AD.
It’s a rich area of basic research that offers hope for greater understanding of AD in the future. It’s also the source of some fascinating images like this one, which was part of the 2022 Show Us Your BRAIN! Photo and Video Contest, supported by NIH’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative.
References:
[1] NeuRegenerate: A framework for visualizing neurodegeneration. Boorboor S, Mathew S, Ananth M, Talmage D, Role LW, Kaufman AE. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2021;Nov 10;PP.
[2] NeuroConstruct: 3D reconstruction and visualization of neurites in optical microscopy brain images. Ghahremani P, Boorboor S, Mirhosseini P, Gudisagar C, Ananth M, Talmage D, Role LW, Kaufman AE. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2022 Dec;28(12):4951-4965.
Links:
Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Dementias (National Institute on Aging/NIH)
Role Lab (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke/NIH)
Talmage Lab (NINDS)
The Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
Show Us Your BRAINs! Photo and Video Contest (BRAIN Initiative)
NIH Support: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Celebrating the Power of Connection This Holiday Season
Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Happy holidays to one and all! This short science video brings to mind all those twinkling lights now brightening the night, as we mark the beginning of winter and shortest day of the year. This video also helps to remind us about the power of connection this holiday season.
It shows a motor neuron in a mouse’s primary motor cortex. In this portion of the brain, which controls voluntary movement, heavily branched neural projections interconnect, sending and receiving signals to and from distant parts of the body. A single motor neuron can receive thousands of inputs at a time from other branching sensory cells, depicted in the video as an array of blinking lights. It’s only through these connections—through open communication and cooperation—that voluntary movements are possible to navigate and enjoy our world in all its wonder. One neuron, like one person, can’t do it all alone.
This power of connection, captured in this award-winning video from the 2022 Show Us Your Brains Photo and Video contest, comes from Forrest Collman, Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle. The contest is part of NIH’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative.
In the version above, we’ve taken some liberties with the original video to enhance the twinkling lights from the synaptic connections. But creating the original was quite a task. Collman sifted through reams of data from high-resolution electron microscopy imaging of the motor cortex to masterfully reconstruct this individual motor neuron and its connections.
Those data came from The Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks (MICrONS) program, supported by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). It’s part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, one of NIH’s governmental collaborators in the BRAIN Initiative.
The MICrONS program aims to better understand the brain’s internal wiring. With this increased knowledge, researchers will develop more sophisticated machine learning algorithms for artificial intelligence applications, which will in turn advance fundamental basic science discoveries and the practice of life-saving medicine. For instance, these applications may help in the future to detect and evaluate a broad range of neural conditions, including those that affect the primary motor cortex.
Pretty cool stuff. So, as you spend this holiday season with friends and family, let this video and its twinkling lights remind you that there’s much more to the season than eating, drinking, and watching football games.
The holidays are very much about the power of connection for people of all faiths, beliefs, and traditions. It’s about taking time out from the everyday to join together to share memories of days gone by as we build new memories and stronger bonds of cooperation for the years to come. With this in mind, happy holidays to one and all.
Links:
“NIH BRAIN Initiative Unveils Detailed Atlas of the Mammalian Primary Motor Cortex,” NIH News Release, October 6, 2021
Forrest Collman (Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle)
Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
Show Us Your Brains Photo and Video Contest (BRAIN Initiative)
The Amazing Brain: Where Thoughts Trigger Body Movement
Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
You’re looking at a section of a mammalian motor cortex (left), the part of the brain where thoughts trigger our body movements. Part of the section is also shown (right) in higher resolution to help you see the intricate details.
These views are incredibly detailed, and they also can’t be produced on a microscope or any current state-of-the-art imaging device. They were created on a supercomputer. Researchers input vast amounts of data covering the activity of the motor cortex to model this highly detailed and scientifically accurate digital simulation.
The vertical section (left) shows a circuit within a column of motor neurons. The neurons run from the top, where the brain meets the skull, downward to the point that the motor cortex connects with other brain areas.
The various colors represent different layers of the motor cortex, and the bright spots show where motor neurons are firing. Notice the thread-like extensions of the motor neurons, some of which double back to connect cells from one layer with others some distance away. All this back and forth makes it appear as though the surface is unraveling.
This unique imaging was part of this year’s Show Us Your Brain Photo and Video contest, supported by NIH’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative. Nicolas Antille, an expert in turning scientific data into accurate and compelling visuals, created the images using a scientific model developed in the lab of Salvador Dura-Bernal, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, Brooklyn, NY. In the Dura-Bernal lab, scientists develop software and highly detailed computational models of neural circuits to better understand how they give rise to different brain functions and behavior [1].
Antille’s images make the motor neurons look densely packed, but in life the density would be five times as much. Antille has paused the computer simulation at a resolution that he found scientifically and visually interesting. But the true interconnections among neurons, or circuits, inside a real brain—even a small portion of a real brain—are more complex than the most powerful computers today can fully process.
While Antille is invested in revealing brain circuits as close to reality as possible, he also has the mind of an artist. He works with the subtle interaction of light with these cells to show how many individual neurons form this much larger circuit. Here’s more of his artistry at work. Antille wants to invite us all to ponder—even if only for a few moments—the wondrous beauty of the mammalian brain, including this remarkable place where thoughts trigger movements.
Reference:
[1] NetPyNE, a tool for data-driven multiscale modeling of brain circuits. Dura-Bernal S, Suter BA, Gleeson P, Cantarelli M, Quintana A, Rodriguez F, Kedziora DJ, Chadderdon GL, Kerr CC, Neymotin SA, McDougal RA, Hines M, Shepherd GM, Lytton WW. Elife. 2019 Apr 26;8:e44494.
Links:
Dura-Bernal Lab (State University of New York Downstate, Brooklyn)
Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
Show Us Your BRAINs Photo & Video Contest (BRAIN Initiative)
NIH Support: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; BRAIN Initiative
The Amazing Brain: Tight-Knit Connections
Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
You’ve likely seen pictures of a human brain showing its smooth, folded outer layer, known as the cerebral cortex. Maybe you’ve also seen diagrams highlighting some of the brain’s major internal, or subcortical, structures.
These familiar representations, however, overlook the brain’s intricate internal wiring that power our thoughts and actions. This wiring consists of tightly bundled neural projections, called fiber tracts, that connect different parts of the brain into an integrated neural communications network.
The actual patterns of these fiber tracts are represented here and serve as the featured attraction in this award-winning image from the 2022 Show Us Your BRAINs Photo and Video contest. The contest is supported by NIH’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative.
Let’s take a closer look. At the center of the brain, you see some of the major subcortical structures: hippocampus (orange), amygdala (pink), putamen (magenta), caudate nucleus (purple), and nucleus accumbens (green). The fiber tracts are presented as colorful, yarn-like projections outside of those subcortical and other brain structures. The various colors, like a wiring diagram, distinguish the different fiber tracts and their specific connections.
This award-winning atlas of brain connectivity comes from Sahar Ahmad, Ye Wu, and Pew-Thian Yap, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The UNC Chapel Hill team produced this image using a non-invasive technique called diffusion MRI tractography. It’s an emerging approach with many new possibilities for neuroscience and the clinic [1]. Ahmad’s team is putting it to work to map the brain’s many neural connections and how they change across the human lifespan.
In fact, the connectivity atlas you see here isn’t from a single human brain. It’s actually a compilation of images of the brains of multiple 30-year-olds. The researchers are using this brain imaging approach to visualize changes in the brain and its fiber tracts as people grow, develop, and mature from infancy into old age.
Sahar says their comparisons of such images show that early in life, many dynamic changes occur in the brain’s fiber tracts. Once a person reaches young adulthood, the connective wiring tends to stabilize until old age, when fiber tracts begin to break down. These and other similarly precise atlases of the human brain promise to reveal fascinating insights into brain organization and the functional dynamics of its architecture, now and in the future.
Reference:
[1] Diffusion MRI fiber tractography of the brain. Jeurissen B, Descoteaux M, Mori S, Leemans A. NMR Biomed. 2019 Apr;32(4):e3785.
Links:
Brain Basics: Know Your Brain (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke/NIH)
Sahar Ahmad (The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Ye Wu (The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Pew-Thian Yap (The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
Show Us Your BRAINs Photo & Video Contest (BRAIN Initiative)
NIH Support: BRAIN Initiative; National Institute of Mental Health
The Amazing Brain: Seeing Two Memories at Once
Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
The NIH’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative is revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain. As described in the initiative’s name, the development of innovative imaging technologies will enable researchers to see the brain in new and increasingly dynamic ways. Each year, the initiative celebrates some standout and especially creative examples of such advances in the “Show Us Your BRAINs! Photo & Video Contest. During most of August, I’ll share some of the most eye-catching developments in our blog series, The Amazing Brain.
In this fascinating image, you’re seeing two stored memories, which scientists call engrams, in the hippocampus region of a mouse’s brain. The engrams show the neural intersection of a good memory (green) and a bad memory (pink). You can also see the nuclei of many neurons (blue), including nearby neurons not involved in the memory formation.
This award-winning image was produced by Stephanie Grella in the lab of NIH-supported neuroscientist Steve Ramirez, Boston University, MA. It’s also not the first time that the blog has featured Grella’s technical artistry. Grella, who will soon launch her own lab at Loyola University, Chicago, previously captured what a single memory looks like.
To capture two memories at once, Grella relied on a technology known as optogenetics. This powerful method allows researchers to genetically engineer neurons and selectively activate them in laboratory mice using blue light. In this case, Grella used a harmless virus to label neurons involved in recording a positive experience with a light-sensitive molecule, known as an opsin. Another molecular label was used to make those same cells appear green when activated.
After any new memory is formed, there’s a period of up to about 24 hours during which the memory is malleable. Then, the memory tends to stabilize. But with each retrieval, the memory can be modified as it restabilizes, a process known as memory reconsolidation.
Grella and team decided to try to use memory reconsolidation to their advantage to neutralize an existing fear. To do this, they placed their mice in an environment that had previously startled them. When a mouse was retrieving a fearful memory (pink), the researchers activated with light associated with the positive memory (green), which for these particular mice consisted of positive interactions with other mice. The aim was to override or disrupt the fearful memory.
As shown by the green all throughout the image, the experiment worked. While the mice still showed some traces of the fearful memory (pink), Grella explained that the specific cells that were the focus of her study shifted to the positive memory (green).
What’s perhaps even more telling is that the evidence suggests the mice didn’t just trade one memory for another. Rather, it appears that activating a positive memory actually suppressed or neutralized the animal’s fearful memory. The hope is that this approach might one day inspire methods to help people overcome negative and unwanted memories, such as those that play a role in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health issues.
Links:
Stephanie Grella (Boston University, MA)
Ramirez Group (Boston University)
Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
Show Us Your BRAINs Photo & Video Contest (BRAIN Initiative)
NIH Support: BRAIN Initiative; Common Fund
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