Human Brain

Scientists have created a way to make a human brain transparent, enabling them to take deep three-dimensional tours through the mysterious organ and trace its circuitry down to the molecular level. The recipe for transforming cadaver brains into see-through research tools stands to accelerate investigations of Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and a host of other brain maladies, and already has led to a significant insight into the peculiar characteristics of neurons associated with Down syndrome and autism.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Even though its ubiquitous Internet search engine practically mints money, Google Inc. was widely seen as a company whose best days were behind it. It was written off as the next Microsoft Corp. - a staid high-tech giant in the shadows of Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. that had lost its sense of urgency and innovative edge. But that sentiment has shifted dramatically over the last year, and when Google swings open the doors to its annual conference for software developers Wednesday, it won't just be showcasing its latest products.

Inside the human skull lies a 3-pound mystery. The brain - a command center composed of tens of billions of branching neurons - controls who we are, what we do and how we feel. "It's the most amazing information structure anybody has ever been able to imagine," says Dr. Walter Koroshetz, deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md. For centuries, the brain's inner workings remained largely unexplored. But all that is changing.

Got burning questions about how memories are made and stored in the brain? You are in luck: Two prominent neuroscientists are taking questions from the public about memory and the brain on Google Chat today and you can watch it live, here. The hangout will run from 11:30 a.m. to noon PDT on Thursday. The scientists will discuss recent discoveries that show memories aren't formed and permanently lodged in just one part of the brain, but rather rely on an extensive network of pathways throughout different regions of the brain.

Hypnosis has come a long way since the swinging pocket watch -- proving useful for pain control, management of phobia and anxiety, in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, and as a supplement to analgesia during medical procedures. But hypnosis is not for everybody. Or, more to the point, everybody is not equally amenable to the the technique's mental magic, which can help a person experience imagined sensations or movements or not feel sensations -- such as intractable pain -- that are all too real.

As one who does close and intense therapeutic work with chronic mentally ill patients in a hospital setting, I truly enjoyed your well-written series on research into the human brain (Oct. 13-16). But as I read, I was continually confronted with one critical issue that seems to receive scant attention in the rush to understand the origins of human behavior and consciousness. I believe that the hope that we may understand the true nature of consciousness is idyllic and will remain elusive.

A team at the Allen Institute for Brain Science has created the first human brain-wide map of gene expression data. The achievement marks a major milestone for the Allen Institute, which previously had released similar data sets for the mouse brain. The data set will allow scientists to test new hypotheses about how the particular genetic codes of different brain areas lead to the unfathomably complex, unified organ. The task of creating an atlas of human gene expression in the brain is not an easy one. First, acquiring clinically normal brains can be a drag -- brains can be among the hardest organs to get permission to excise, and to chop up for study.

The Obama administration is reportedly considering funding a multibillion-dollar effort to map the human brain. This so-called Brain Activity Map project is inspired by the success of the Human Genome Project in mapping the genetic code. The proposal was outlined in the journal Neuron last summer by a group of leading researchers, among them geneticist George Church of Harvard Medical School, one of the originators of the genome project. This is an endeavor with exciting potential, but we should think about the pros and the cons before proceeding.

U.S. researchers have produced laboratory mice with human brain cells, marking a potential step toward developing treatments for human brain disease such as Alzheimer's but promising to fuel fresh debate over bioengineering. The research was done at California biotechnology company StemCells Inc. "We are not re-creating a human brain.

A jar containing what appears to be part of a human brain was discovered in the bed of a truck that was abandoned in Huntington Beach, police said Wednesday. The blue 1962 Dodge pickup was found behind a motel on Yorktown Avenue on Jan. 14 and had been at a private impound lot ever since, police said. The brain, sealed in a half-gallon glass jar of murky liquid, apparently had been there undisturbed until the truck was cleaned out Wednesday to be put up for auction.

Scientists at Stanford University on Wednesday released a video of a three-dimensional tour of a mouse brain, using a technique that made the brain see-through. The development could lead to rapid advances in research into Alzheimer's disease and other brain maladies. The researchers also made part of a human brain transparent, and used it to produce sharp imagery of deformed neurons that may be associated with Down syndrome and autism. It took six years for engineers and biochemists to remove the matrix of fats from a brain and replace it with a plastic gel. Imagine taking the binder out of a casserole and replacing it with Jell-O and you're close to what they've done.

Scientists have created a way to make a human brain transparent, enabling them to take deep three-dimensional tours through the mysterious organ and trace its circuitry down to the molecular level. The recipe for transforming cadaver brains into see-through research tools stands to accelerate investigations of Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and a host of other brain maladies, and already has led to a significant insight into the peculiar characteristics of neurons associated with Down syndrome and autism.

President Obama wants to invest an initial $110 million in a study of the human brain that could have benefits as great as those achieved by the Human Genome Project. Maybe the first study should be done on the one-track minds of tea party Republicans, who will undoubtedly oppose funding for the study because their brains are fixated on the single idea that government can do nothing right. After that, researchers could move on to figuring out Sarah Palin's brain. Perhaps they could answer this question: How can a person with so little knowledge and so little interest in acquiring knowledge imagine that she has what it takes to be president of the United States?

Making good on a promise first hinted at during his State of the Union speech in February, President Obama on Tuesday unveiled the broad outlines of a scientific initiative aimed at mapping the human brain. The project's ambitious goals include understanding how the brain forms memories and controls behavior; how it becomes damaged by conditions such as Parkinson's disease and autism; and how it can be repaired when afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder and other illnesses.

WASHINGTON - President Obama is asking Congress to approve $110 million in new spending for research on the human brain, an investment he said would benefit not just science but the economy. “Ideas are what power our economy,” Obama said Tuesday in announcing the proposal. “When we invest in the best ideas before anybody else does, our businesses and our workers can make the best products and deliver the best services before anybody else.” The “BRAIN” initiative - for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies - would start with $110 million in the budget for fiscal year 2014 that Obama plans to unveil next week.

President Obama on Tuesday announced the "BRAIN Initiative" to map the human brain. "As humans we can identify galaxies light-years away, study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the 3 pounds of matter than sits between our ears," Obama said. Obama will propose $100 million in federal funding in his 2014 budget to kick-start the public-private project, whose formal title is "Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies.

In 1848, 25-year-old Phineas P. Gage, foreman of a crew laying track for the Rutland & Burlington Vermont railroad, turned his head for a second while preparing to set off a blast. That was a mistake. The explosive misfired, hurling Gage's narrow 3 1/2-foot iron tamping rod into his cheek and out through the top of his head. Had Gage died, this story would not have entered into history.

It never occurred to me a decade ago when I was writing about the roles parenting and sexual selection play in evolution that these theories would one day be adapted by a different group of researchers--people interested in building machines that think. Nor did it occur to me then that building such machines would be possible.

The Obama administration is reportedly considering funding a multibillion-dollar effort to map the human brain. This so-called Brain Activity Map project is inspired by the success of the Human Genome Project in mapping the genetic code. The proposal was outlined in the journal Neuron last summer by a group of leading researchers, among them geneticist George Church of Harvard Medical School, one of the originators of the genome project. This is an endeavor with exciting potential, but we should think about the pros and the cons before proceeding.

Why do we spend roughly 10% of our waking hours with our eyes closed -- blinking far more often than is actually necessary to keep our eyeballs lubricated? Scientists have pried open the answer to this mystery, finding that the human brain uses that tiny moment of shut-eye to power down. The mental break can last anywhere from a split second to a few seconds before attention is fully restored, researchers from Japan's Osaka University found. During that time, scans that track the ebb and flow of blood within the brain revealed that regions associated with paying close attention momentarily go offline.