Do you remember from your biology course, what a synapse is?
Actually, we are still trying to understand it, so if you already forget, no
worries. It has been estimated that the number of possible connections
(synapses) that could be formed in our brain is higher than the number of the
atoms in the universe! While our brain is this complex, a simplified view is
necessary to understand its functions and to be able to develop treatments for
devastating neurological diseases.
The main research focus of my laboratory is to investigate the
changes in the brain structure after an injury. Upon a brain injury, for example
due to a traffic or sports accident, the brain region that is exposed to the
direct injury is damaged and mostly degenerates itself. This can be considered
as hitting one side of our car to the wall while we are parking. The impact
site will be destroyed while the rest of the car remains physically unaffected.
However, when we follow brain injury patients at the clinic over years and
decades, we observe degeneration of the brain far away from the lesion side. This
spreading of degeneration in the brain eventually results in long-term complications
including early onset of dementia such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease
or neuropsychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia and depression. We are
familiar with Muhammed Ali, who got Parkinson’s disease at the age of 42, due
to the head injuries he was exposed to during boxing. On the other hand, we
also know various American Football players having psychiatric problems,
committing suicide or being heavily depressed, again due to head injuries they
receive during their professional career. All these long-term complications
that are observed over years to decades in humans after brain injuries imply that
their brain structure continuously changes. How does this happen? How does damage
at one corner of the brain physically spread to the rest of it? What are the
mechanisms driving this spread? My research group is now trying to address
these important questions.
Mild brain injuries occur often in children when they play.
We mostly ignore such small injuries in children. However, it is possible that
they are the cause of complications such as ADHD (Attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder) and epilepsy seen later in life.
One way to study brain function in health and disease is to visualize
its structure and activity with imaging techniques. Most of us probably have
seen MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) pictures showing the general structure of
the brain. They help doctors to identify brain regions with abnormalities, such
as a tumor or degenerating tissue. However, the zoom ability of MRI is very low
and usually can only show the large changes, not the details. We can imagine
this as the satellite view over a city. If there is a fire in a particular region,
the satellite view will help us to determine which building is on fire.
However, this view will be insufficient to resolve the source of the problem,
whether it started at an electricity connection, gas pipe, or someone’s cigarette
bud, which was not extinguished. Similarly, while MRI pictures can show the overall
brain structure, they cannot resolve sufficient details to see the cellular
mechanisms that can cause dementia and psychiatric diseases. To overcome this
limitation, my group develops novel imaging techniques to observe detailed
structures in the brain and help to identify the source of brain diseases. An
important limitation of brain imaging is that the light cannot penetrate deep
into brain structures, because it is blocked by opaque tissue -such as skull- at
the surface. One way to light up the deep brain structures for visualization is
to make them transparent. In recent years, we developed methods to render the
brain transparent to be able to ‘look inside’ the brain. This is similar to
making the buildings transparent via glass constructions from top to bottom.
Now, using the satellites with high zoom features, one can see through the
buildings and identify the source of a possible fire, because now we are able
to zoom and image every detail of the building. We call this method 3DISCO. You
can see some examples of such transparent organs at the following link: http://youtu.be/cyHNHJ2eHYs
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